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(p. 159) 

MR. QUEED, YOU ARE AFFLICTED WITH A 
FATAL MALADY. YOUR COSMOS IS ALL EGO. 



QUEED 

A NOVEL 

BY 

HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON 

. ^ V 

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY 
R. M. CROSBY 



NEW YORK 
GROSSET & DUNLAP 
PUBLISHERS 



WOODRIDGE 


?£3 

Q 

5 


COPYRIGHT, I9II, BY HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


TRAN9PBS 

9i Q, PUBLIC -I8BASI 

SUBPT. 10 , 1040 


OP 0OLTJMSIA PROPERTY 

transf-brrbb from public library 


TO MY MOTHER 





































































































































































































































































































































































































































































' 

























































































































































CONTENTS 


I 

First Meeting between a Citizen in Spectacles and the Great 
Pleasure-Dog Behemoth; also of Charles Gardiner West , a 
Personage at Thirty 3 


II 

Mrs . Paynter's Boarding-House: which was not founded as an 
Eleemosynary Institution 14 


III 

Encounter between Charlotte Lee Weyland, a Landlady's Agent , 
and Doctor Queed, a Young Man who wouldn't pay his 
Board 25 

IV 

Relating how Two Stars in their Courses fought for Mr. Queed; 
and how he accepted Remunerative Employment under Colonel 
Cowles , the Military Political Economist 40 

V 

Selections from Contemporary Opinions of Mr. Queed; also con- 
cerning Henry G. Surface , his Life and Deeds; of Fife, the 
Landlady's Daughter , and how she happened to look up Al- 
truism in the Dictionary 51 

VI 

Autobiographical Data imparted , for Sound Business Reasons , 
to a Landlady's Agent; of the Agent's Other Title , etc. ... 64 

VII 

In which an Assistant Editor , experiencing the Common Desire 
to thrash a Proof-Reader , makes a Humiliating Discovery; 
and of how Trainer Klinker gets a Pupil the Same Evening . 79 

VIII 

Formal Invitation to Fifi to share Queed' s Dining-Room {pro- 
vided it is very cold upstairs); and First Outrage upon the 
Sacred Schedule of Hours 93 


viii 


CONTENTS 


IX 

Of Charles Gardiner West , President-Elect of Blaines College , 
and his Ladies Fair: all in Mr. West's Lighter Manner. . .104 

X 

Of Fiji on Friendship , and who would he sorry if Queed died; 
of Queed' s Mad Impulse , sternly overcome; of his Indignant 
Call upon Nicolovius , the Old Professor 114 

XI 

Concerning a Plan to make a Small Gift to a Fellow-Boarder, 
and what it led to in the Way of Calls; also touching upon 
Mr. Queed' s Dismissal from the Post, and the Generous Re- 
solve of the Young Lady, Charles Weyland 127 

XII 

More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. 
Queed drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fiji on Men, and 


how they do; Second Corruption of the Sacred Schedule . .137 

XIII 

* l Taking the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two”: as performed 
for the First and Only Time by Sharlee Weyland . . . .146 

XIV 

In which Klinker quotes Scripture, and Queed has helped Fiji 
with her Lessons for the Last Time 163 

XV 

In a Country Churchyard, and afterwards; of Friends: how they 
take your Time while they live , and then die, upsetting your 
Evening's Work; and what Buck Klinker saw in the Scripto- 
rium at 2 a. m 174 


XVI 

Triumphal Return of Charles Gardiner West from the Old World; 
and of how the Other World had wagged in his A bsence . . .186 

XVII 

A Remeeting in a Cemetery: the Unglassed Queed who loafed on 
Rustic Bridges; of the Consequences of failing to tell a Lady 
that you hope to see her again soon 200 


CONTENTS 


IX 


XVIII 

Of President West cf Old Blaines College , his Trustees and his 
Troubles; his Firmness in the Brown -Jones Hazing Incident 
so misconstrued by Malicious Asses; his Article for the Post , 
and why it was never printed: all ending in West's Profound 
Dissatisfaction with the Rewards of Patriotism 216 

XIX 

The Little House on Duke of Gloucester Street; and the Beginning 
of Various Feelings , Sensibilities , and Attitudes between two 
Lonely Men 239 

XX 

Meeting of the Post Directors to elect a Successor to Colonel Cowles; 
Charles Gardiner West's Sensible Remarks on Mr. Queed; Mr. 
West's Resignation from Old Blaines College, and New Con- 


secration to the Uplift 248 

XXI 

Queed sits on the Steps with Sharlee, and sees Some Old Soldiers go 
marching by 257 

XXII 

In which Professor Nicolovius drops a Letter on the Floor, and 
Queed conjectures that Happiness sometimes comes to Men 
wearing a Strange Face 274 

XXIII 


Of the Bill for the Reformatory, and its Critical Situation; of 
West's Second Disappointment with the Rewards of Patriot- 
ism; of the Consolation he found in the Most Charming Re- 
solve in the World • • 290 

XXIV 

Sharlee' s Parlor on Another Evening; how One Caller outsat Two, 
and why; also, how Sharlee looked in her Mirror for a Long 
Time, and why 300 

XXV 

Recording a Discussion about the Reformatory between Editor 
West and his Dog-like Admirer, the City Boss; and a Briefer 
Conversation between West and Prof. Nicolovius' s Boarder . 312 


X 


CONTENTS 


XXVI 


In which Queed forces the Old Professor’s Hand, and the Old Pro- 
fessor takes to his Bed 33 ° 


XXVII 

Sharlee Weyland reads the Morning Post; of Rev. Mr. Dayne's 
Fight at Ephesus and the Telephone Message that never came; 
of the Editor's Comment upon the Assistant Editor's Resigna- 
tion, which perhaps lacked Clarity; and of how Eight Men 
elect a Mayor 345 

XXVIII 

How Words can be like" Blows, and Blue Eyes stab deep; how 
Queed sits by a Bedside and reviews his Life; and how a 
Thought leaps at him and will not down 363 

XXIX 

In which Queed' s Shoulders can bear One Man's Roguery and 
Another's Dishonor, and of what these Fardels cost him: how 
for the Second Time in his Life he stays out of Bed to think . . 375 

xxx 

Death of the Old Professor, and how Queed finds that his List of 
Friends has grown; a Last Will and Testament; Exchange of 
Letters among Prominent Attorneys, which unhappily proves 
futile 387 


XXXI 

God moves in a Mysterious Way : how the finished Miss Avery 
appears as the Instrument of Providence ; how Sharlee sees 
her Idol of Many Years go toppling in the Dust, and how it is 
her Turn to meditate in the Still Watches . 397 

XXXII 

Second Meeting between a Citizen and the Great Pleasure-Dog 
Behemoth, involving Plans for Two New Homes 416 


gUEED 



QUEED 

I 

First Meeting between a Citizen in Spectacles and the Great 
Pleasure-Dog Behemoth ; also of Charles Gardiner West, a 
Personage at Thirty. 

I T was five of a November afternoon, crisp and sharp, 
and already running into dusk. Down the street came 
a girl and a dog, rather a small girl and quite a behe- 
mothian dog. If she had been a shade smaller, or he a shade 
more behemothian, the thing would have approached a 
parody on one’s settled idea of a girl and a dog. She had 
enough height to save that, but it was the narrowest sort 
of squeak. 

The dog was of the breed which are said to come trotting 
into Alpine monasteries of a winter’s night with fat Ameri- 
can travelers in their mouths, frozen stiff. He was extremely 
large for his age, whatever that was. On the other hand, 
the girl was small for her age, which was twenty-four next 
month; not so much short, you understand, for she was of 
a reasonable height, as of a dainty slimness, a certain ex- 
quisite reticence of the flesh. She had cares and duties and 
even sober-sided responsibilities in this world, beyond the 
usual run of girls. Yet her hat was decidedly of the mode 
that year; her suit was smartly and engagingly cut; her furs 
were glossy and black and big. Her face, it may be said 
here as well as later, had in its time given pleasure to the 
male sex, and some food for critical conversation to the 
female. A good many of the young men whom she met 
along the way this afternoon appeared distinctly pleased 
to speak to her. 


4 OUEED 

The girl was Sharlee Weyland, and Sharlee was the short 
for Charlotte Lee, as invented by herself some score of years 
before. One baby-name in a hundred sticks through a life- 
time, and hers was the one in that particular hundred. Of 
the young men along the way, one was so lucky as to catch 
her eye through a large plate-glass window. It was Semple 
and West’s window, the ground-floor one in the great new 
Commonwealth Building, of which the town is rightly so 
proud, and the young man was no other than West, Charles 
Gardiner himself. A smile warmed his good-looking face 
when he met the eye of the girl and the dog; he waved a hand 
at them. That done, he immediately vanished from the 
window and reached for his hat and coat; gave hurried 
directions to a clerk and a stenographer; and sallying forth, 
overtook the pair before they had reached the next corner. 

“Everything’s topsy-turvy,” said he, coming alongside. 
“Here you are frivolously walking downtown with a dog. 
Usually at this time you are most earnestly walking up- 
town, and not a sign of a dog as far as the eye can see. What 
on earth’s happened?” 

“Oh, how do you do?” said she, apparently not displeased 
to find herself thus surprised from the rear. “I too have a 
mad kind of feeling, as though the world had gone upside 
down. Don’t be amazed if I suddenly clutch out at you 
to keep from falling. But the name of it — of this feeling 
— is having a holiday. Mr. Dayne went to New York at 
12 . 20 .” 

“Ah, I see. When the cat’s away?” 

“Not at all. I am taking this richly earned vacation by 
his express command. ” 

“In that case, why mightn’t we turn about and go a 
real walk — cease picking our way through the noisome hum 
of commerce and set brisk evening faces toward the open 
road — and all that? You and I and the dog. What is his 
name? Rollo, I suppose?” 

“Rollo! No! Or Tray or Fido, either! His name is Bee, 
short for Behemoth — and I think that a very captivating 


QUEED 3 

little name, don’t you? His old name, the one I bought him 
by, was Fred — Fred ! — but already he answers to the 
pretty name of Bee as though he were born to it. Watch.” 
She pursed her lips and gave a whistle, unexpectedly loud 
and clear. “Here, Bee, here! Here, sir! Look, look. He 
turned around right away 1” 

West laughed. “Wonderfully gifted dog. But I believe 
you mentioned taking a walk in the November air. I can 
only say that physicians strongly recommend it, valetudi- 
narians swear by it — ” 

“Oh — if I only could! — but I simply cannot think of 
it. Do you know, I never have a holiday without wondering 
how on earth I could have gotten on another day without 
it. You can’t imagine what loads of things I ’ve done since 
two o’clock, and loads remain. The very worst job of them 
all still hangs by a hair over my head. I must cross here.” 

West said that evidently her conception of a holiday was 
badly mixed. As they walked he paid for her society by 
incessantly taking off his hat; nearly everybody they met 
spoke to them, many more to him than to her. Though 
both of them had been born in that city and grown up with 
it, the girl had only lately come to know West well, and she 
did not know him very well now. All the years hitherto she 
had joined in the general admiration of him shyly and from 
a distance, the pretty waiting-lady’s attitude toward the 
dazzling young crown prince. She was observant, and so 
she could not fail to observe now the cordiality with which 
people of all sorts saluted him, the touch of deference in the 
greeting of not a few. He was scarcely thirty, but it would 
have been clear to a duller eye that he was already some- 
thing of a personage. Yet he held no public office, nor were 
his daily walks the walks of philanthropic labor for the com- 
mon good. In fact Semple & West’s was merely a brokerage 
establishment, which was understood to be cleaning up a 
tolerable lot of money per annum. 

They stood on the corner, waiting for a convenient chance 
to cross, and West looked at her as at one whom it was 


6 QUEED 

pleasant to rest one’s eyes upon. She drew his attention 
to their humming environment. For a city of that size 
the life and bustle here were, indeed, such as to take the 
eye. Trolley cars clanged by in a tireless procession; trucks 
were rounding up for stable and for bed ; delivery wagons 
whizzed corners and bumped on among them; now and 
then a chauffeur honked by, grim eyes roving for the un- 
wary pedestrian. On both sides of the street the homeward 
march of tired humans was already forming and quick- 
ening. 

“ Heigho! We’re living in an interesting time, you and I,” 
said West. “It isn’t every generation that can watch its 
old town change into a metropolis right under its eyes.” 

“I remember,” said she, “when it was an exciting thing 
to see anybody on the street you did n’t know. You went 
home and told the family about it, and very likely counted 
the spoons next morning. The city seemed to belong to us 
then. And now — look. Everywhere new kings that know 
not Joseph. Bee!” 

“ It’s the law of life; the old order changeth.” He turned 
and looked along the street, into the many faces of the home- 
ward bound. “The eternal mystery of the people. , . . 
Don’t you like to look at their faces and wonder what they ’re 
all doing and thinking and hoping and dreaming to make 
out of their lives?” 

“Don’t you think they’re all hoping and dreaming just 
one thing? — how to make more money than they’re mak- 
ing at present? All over the world,” said Miss Weyland, 
“bright young men lie awake at night, thinking up odd, 
ingenious ways to take other people’s money away from 
them. These young men are the spirit of America. We’re 
having an irruption of them here now . . . the Goths sack- 
ing the sacred city.” 

“Clever rascals they are too. I,” said West, “belong to 
the other group. I sleep of nights and wake up in the morn- 
ing to have your bright young Goths take my money 
away from me.” 


QUEED 7 

He laughed and continued: “Little Bobby Smythe, who 
used to live here, was in my office the other day. I was 
complimenting him on the prosperity of the plumbers’ 
supply manufacture — for such is his mundane occupation, 
in Schenectady, N. Y. Bobby said that plumbers’ supplies 
were all well enough, but he made his real money from an 
interesting device of his own. There is a lot of building 
going on in his neighborhood, it seems, and it occurred to 
him to send around to the various owners and offer his pri- 
vate watchman to guard the loose building materials at 
night. This for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a week. 
It went like hot cakes. ‘ But,’ said I, ‘ surely your one watch- 
man can’t look after thirty-seven different places.’ ‘No,’ 
said Bobby, ‘but they think he does.’ I laughed and com- 
mended his ingenuity. ‘But the best part of the joke,’ 
said he, ‘is that I have n't got any watchman at all.'" 

Sharlee Weyland laughed gayly. “Bobby could stand for 
the portrait of young America.’’ 

“You’ve been sitting at the feet of a staunch old Tory 
Gamaliel named Colonel Cowles. I can see that. Ah, me! 
My garrulity has cost us a splendid chance to cross. What 
are all these dreadful things you have still left to do on your 
so-called holiday?” 

“Well,” said she, “first I’m going to Saltman’s to buy 
stationery. Boxes and boxes of it, for the Department. 
Bee! Come here, sir! Look how fat this purse is. I ’m going 
to spend all of that. Bee! I wish I had put him to leash. 
He’s going to hurt himself in a minute — you see! — ” 

“Don’t you think he’s much more likely to hurt some- 
body else? For a guess, that queer-looking little citizen in 
spectacles over the way, who so evidently does n’t know 
where he is at.” 

“Oh, do you think so? — Bee! . . . Then, after station- 
ery, comes the disagreeable thing, and yet interesting too. 
I have to go to my Aunt Jennie’s, dunning.” 

“You are compelled to dun your Aunt Jennie?” 

She laughed. “No — dun for her, because she’s too 


8 QUEED 

tender-hearted to do it herself. There’s a man there w 
won’t pay his board. Bee! Bee! — BEE! — O heavens 
It’s happened!” 

And, too quick for West, she was gone into the melee, which 
immediately closed in behind her, barricading him away. 

What had happened was a small tragedy in its way. 
The little citizen in spectacles, who had been standing 
on the opposite corner vacantly eating an apple out of a 
paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to try the cross- 
ing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes 
at crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his 
mind. A grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing 
things to the speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing 
police patrol was close behind, treading on its tail and in- 
dignantly clanging it to turn out, which it could not pos- 
sibly do. To avoid erasing the little citizen, the patrol man 
had to pull sharply out; and this manoeuvre, as Fate had 
written it, brought him full upon the great dog Behemoth, 
who, having slipped across the tracks, stood gravely wait- 
ing for the flying wagon to pass. Thus it became a clear 
case of sauve qui pent, and the devil take the hindermost. 
There was nothing in the world for Behemoth to do but 
wildly leap under the hoofs for his life. This he did success- 
fully. But on the other side he met the spectacled citizen 
full and fair, and down they went together with a thud. 

The little man came promptly to a sitting posture and 
took stock of the wreck. His hat he could not see anywhere, 
the reason being that he was sitting on it. The paper bag, 
of course, had burst; some of the apples had rolled to amaz- 
ing distances, and newsboys, entire strangers to the fallen 
gentleman, were eating them with cries of pleasure. This 
he saw in one pained glance. But on the very heels of the 
dog, it seemed, came hurrying a girl with marks of great 
anxiety on her face. 

“Can you possibly forgive him? That fire-alarm thing 
scared him crazy — he’s usually so good! You are n’t hurt f 
are you? I do hope so much that you are n’t?” 


QUEED 9 

The young man, sitting calmly in the street, glanced up 
at Miss Weyland with no sign of interest. 

“I have no complaint to make,” he answered, precisely; 
“ though the loss of my fruit seems unfortunate, to say the 
least of it.” 

“I know! The way they fell on them,” she answered, as 
self-unconscious as he — “quite as though you had offered 
to treat! I ’m very much mortified — But — are you hurt? 
I thought for a minute that the coal cart was going right 
over you.” 

A crowd had sprung up in a wink; a circle of interested 
faces watching the unembarrassed girl apologizing to the 
studious-looking little man who sat so calmly upon his hat 
in the middle of the street. Meantime all traffic on that side 
was hopelessly blocked. Swearing truck drivers stood up on 
their seats from a block away to see what had halted the 
procession. 

“But what is the object of a dog like that?” inquired the 
man ruminatively. “What good is he? What is he for?” 

“Why — why — why,” said she, looking ready to laugh 
— “he’s not a utilitarian dog at all, you see! He’s a pleas- 
ure-dog, you know — just a big, beautiful dog to give 
pleasure! — ” 

“The pleasure he has given me,” said the man, gravely 
producing his derby from beneath him and methodically 
undenting it, “is negligible. I may say non-existent.” 

From somewhere rose a hoarse titter. The girl glanced 
up, and for the first time became aware that her position 
was somewhat unconventional. A very faint color sprang 
into her cheeks, but she was not the kind to retreat in dis- 
order. West dodged through the blockade in time to hear 
her say with a final, smiling bow: 

“I’m so glad you aren’t hurt, believe me . . . And if 
my dog has given you no pleasure, you may like to think 
that you have given him a great deal.” 

A little flushed but not defeated, her gloved hand knotted 
in Behemoth’s gigantic scruff, she moved away, resigning the 


io QUEED 

situation to West. West handled it in his best manner, 
civilly assisting the little man to rise, and bowing himself off 
with the most graceful expressions of regret for the mishap. 

Miss Weyland was walking slowly, waiting for him, and 
he fell in beside her on the sidewalk. 

“Don’t speak to me suddenly,” said she, in rather a muf- 
fled voice. “ I don’t want to scream on a public street.” 

“Scratch a professor and you find a Tartar,” said West, 
laughing too. “When I finally caught you, laggard that I 
was, you looked as if he were being rude.” 

Miss Weyland questioned the rudeness; she said that the 
man was only superbly natural. “Thoughts came to him and 
he blabbed them out artlessly. The only things that he 
seemed in the least interested in were his apples and Bee. 
Don’t you think from this that he must be a floral and faunal 
naturalist?” 

“No Goth, at any rate. Did you happen to notice the 
tome sticking out of his coat pocket? It was The Religion 
of Humanity, unless my old eyes deceived me. Who under 
heaven reads Comte nowadays?” 

“Not me,” said Miss Weyland. 

“There’s nothing to it. As a wealthy old friend of mine 
once remarked, people who read that sort of books never 
make over eighteen hundred a year.” 

On that they turned into Saltman’s. There much sta- 
tionery and collateral stuff was bought for cash paid down, 
and all for the use ot the Department. Next, at a harness- 
store, a leash was bargained for and obtained, and Behe- 
moth bowled over no more young men that day. There- 
after, the two set their faces westerly till they came to the 
girl’s home, where the dog was delivered to the cook, and 
Miss Weyland went upstairs to kiss her mother. Still later 
they set out northward through the lamp-lit night for the 
older part of town, where resided the aunt on whose behalf 
there was dunning to be done that night. 

Charles Gardiner West asserted that he had not a thing 
in all this world to do, and that erranding was only another 


OUEED il 

way of taking a walk, when you came to think of it. She 
was frankly glad of his company; to be otherwise was to be 
fantastic; and now as they strolled she led him to talk of 
his work, which was never difficult. For West, despite his 
rising prosperity, was dissatisfied with his calling, the reason 
being, as he himself sometimes put it, that his heart did not 
abide with the money changers. 

“Sometimes at night,” he said seriously, “I look back 
over the busy day and ask myself what it has all amounted 
to. Suppose I did all the world’s stock- jobbing, what would 
I really have accomplished? You may say that I could 
take all the money I made and spend it for free hospi- 
tals, but would I do it? No. The more I made, the more 
I ’d want for myself, the more all my interest and ambition 
would twine themselves around the counting-room. You 
can’t serve two masters, can you, Miss Weyland? Uplift- 
ing those who need uplifting is a separate business, all by 
itself.” 

“You could make the money,” laughed she, “and let 
me spend it for you. I know this minute where I could put 
a million to glorious advantage.” 

“I’m going to get out of it,” said West. “I’ve told Semple 
so — though perhaps it ought not to go further just yet. 
I’d enjoy,” said he, “just such work as yours. There’s 
none finer. You ’d like me immensely as your royal master, 
I suppose? Want nothing better than to curtsy and kow- 
tow when I flung out a gracious order? — as, for instance, 
to shut up shop and go and take a holiday?” 

“Delicious! Though I doubt if anybody in the world 
could improve on Mr. Dayne.” Suddenly a new thought 
struck her, and she made a faint grimace. “There’s nothing 
so very fine about my present work — oh me ! I ’ll give you 
that if you want it.” 

“ I see I must look this gift horse over very closely. What 
is it?” 

“They call it dunning.” 

“ I forgot. You started to tell me, and then your dog ran 


12 QUEED 

amuck and began butting perfect strangers all over the 
place.” 

“Oh,” said she, “it’s the commonest little story in the 
world. All landladies can tell them to you by the hour. 
This man has been at Aunt Jennie’s nearly a month, and 
what’s the color of his money she has n’t the faintest idea. 
Such is the way our bright young men carve out their 
fortunes — the true Gothic architecture! Possibly Aunt 
Jennie has thrown out one or two delicate hints, carefully 
insulated to avoid hurting his feelings. You know the way 
our ladies of the old school do — the worst collectors the 
world has ever seen. So she telephoned me this morning — 
I ’m her business woman, you see — asking me to come and 
advise her, and I’m coming, and after supper — ” 

“Well, what’ll you do?” 

“I’m going to talk with him, with the man. I ’m simply 
going to collect that money. Or if I can’t — ” 

“What’s the horrid alternative?” 

“I’m going to fire him!” 

West laughed merrily. His face always looked most charm- 
ing when he smiled. “ Upon my word I believe you can do it.” 

“I have done it, lots of times.” 

“Ah! And is the ceremony ever attended by scenes of 
storm and violence?” 

“Never. They march like little lambs when I say the 
word. Hay-foot — straw-foot ! ” 

“But then your aunt loses their arrears of board, I suppose.” 

“Yes, and for that reason I never fire except as a last 
desperate resort. Signs of penitence, earnest resolves to 
lead a better life, are always noted and carefully considered.” 

“ If you should need help with this customer to-night — not 
that I think you will, oh no! — telephone me. I ’m amazingly 
good at handling bright young men. This is your aunt’s, 
is n’t it?” 

“No, no — next to the corner over there. O heavens! 
Look — look!” 

West looked. Up the front steps of Miss Weyland’s 


OUEED 13 

Aunt Jennie’s a man was going, a smallish man in a suit 
of dusty clothes, who limped as he walked. The electric light 
at the corner illumined him perfectly — glinted upon the 
spectacles, touched up the stout volume in the coat-pocket, 
beat full upon the swaybacked derby, whereon its owner had 
sat what time Charlotte Lee Weyland apologized for the 
gaucherie of Behemoth. And as they watched, this man 
pushed open Aunt Jennie’s front door, with never so much 
as a glance at the door-bell, and stepped as of right 
inside. 

Involuntarily West and Miss Weyland had halted; and 
now they stared at each other with a kind of wild surmise 
which rapidly yielded to ludicrous certainty. West broke 
into a laugh. 

“Well, do you think you’ll have the nerve to fire him ?” 


II 

Mrs. Paynter's Boarding-House : which was not founded as 
an Eleemosynary Institution. 

T HERE was something of a flutter among the gathered 
boarders when Miss Weyland was seen to be enter- 
ing the house, and William Klinker, who announced 
the fact from his place by the window, added that that 
had ought to help some with the supper. He reminded 
the parlor that there had been Porterhouse the last time. 
Miss Miller, from the sofa, told Mr. Klinker archly that he 
was so material. She had only the other day mastered the 
word, but even that is more than could be said for Mr. 
Klinker. Major Brooke stood by the Latrobe heater, read- 
ing the evening paper under a flaring gas-light. He habitu- 
ally came down early to get it before anybody else had a 
chance. By Miss Miller on the sofa sat Mr. Bylash, 
stroking the glossy moustache which other ladies before her 
time had admired intensely. Despite her archness Miss 
Miller had heard with a pang that Miss Weyland was com- 
ing to supper, and her reason was not unconnected with 
this same Mr. Bylash. In earlier meetings she had vaguely 
noted differences between Mrs. Paynter’s pretty niece and 
herself. True, she considered these differences all in her 
own favor, as, for example, her far larger back pompadour, 
with the puffs, but you never could tell about gentlemen. 

“I’m surprised,” she said to Mr. Klinker, “Mr. Bylash 
did n’t go out to give her the glad hand, and welcome her 
into our humble coturee .” 

Mr. Bylash, who had been thinking of doing that very 
thing, said rather shortly that the ladies present quite 
satisfied him. 

“And who do you think brought her around and right 
up to the door ? ” continued William Klinker, taking no 


QUEED 15 

notice of their blandishments. “Hon. West — Charles* 
Gardenia West — ” 

A scream from Miss Miller applauded the witty hit. 

“Oh, it ain’t mine,” said Mr. Klinker modestly. “I 
heard a fellow get it off at the shop the other day. He’s a 
pretty smooth fellow, Charles Gardenia is — a little too 
smooth for my way of thinking. A fellow that’s always 
so smilin’ — Oh, you Smithy!” he suddenly yelled out the 
window — “Smithy! Hey! — Aw, I can beat the face off 
you! — Awright — eight sharp at the same place. — Go on, 
you fat Mohawk you! . . . But say,” he resumed to the 
parlor, “y’know that little woman is a stormy petrel for 
this house — that ’s right. Remember the last time she was 
here — the time we had the Porterhouse? Conference in 
the dining-room after supper, and the next morning out 
went the trunks of that red-head fellow — from Baltimore 
— what’s his name? — Milhiser.” 

“Well, she has n’t got any call to intrude in my affairs,” 
said Mr. Bylash, still rather miffed. “I’m here to tell you 
that!” 

“Oh, I ain’t speakin’ of the reg’lars,” answered Klinker, 
“so don’t get nervous. But say, I got kind of a hunch that 
here is where the little Doc gets his.” 

Klinker’s hunch was not without foundation; this very 
question was being agitated at that moment in the room 
just over his head. Miss Weyland, having passed the parlor 
portieres with no thought that her movements were at- 
tracting interest on the other side of them, skipped up the 
stairs, rapped on her Aunt Jennie’s door, and ran breath- 
lessly into the room. Her aunt was sitting by the bureau, 
reading a novel from the circulating library. Though she 
had been sitting right there since about four o’clock, only 
getting up once to light the gas, she had a casual air like 
one who is only killing a moment’s time between important 
engagements. She looked up at the girl’s entrance, and an 
affectionate smile lit her well-lined face. 

“My dear Sharlee! I’m so glad to see you.” 


l6 


QUEED 


They kissed tenderly. 

“Oh, Aunt Jennie, tell me! Is he — this man you tele- 
phoned me about — is he a little, small, dried young man, 
with spectacles and a brown derby, and needing a hair-cut, 
and the gravest, drollest manner in the world? Tell me 
— is he?” 

“My dear, you have described him to the life. Where 
did you see him?” 

Sharlee collapsed upon the bed. Presently she revived 
and outlined the situation to Aunt Jennie. 

Mrs. Paynter listened with some interest. If humor is a 
defect, as they tell us nowadays, she was almost a fault- 
less woman. And in her day she had been a beauty and a 
toast. You hear it said generously of a thousand, but it 
happened to be true in her case. The high-bred regularity 
of feature still survived, but she had let herself go in latter 
years, as most women will who have other things than them- 
selves to think about, and hard things at that. Her old 
black dress was carelessly put on; she could look at herself 
in the mirror by merely leaning forward an inch or two, and 
it never occurred to her to do it — an uncanny thing in a 
woman. 

“I’m sure it sounds quite like him,” said Mrs. Paynter, 
when her niece had finished. “And so Gardiner West 
walked around with you. I hope, my dear, you asked him 
in to supper? We have an exceptionally nice Porterhouse 
steak to-night. But I suppose he would scorn — ” 

The girl interrupted her, abolishing and demolishing such 
a thought. Mr. West would have been only too pleased, 
she said, but she positively would not ask him, because of 
the serious work that was afoot that night. 

“The pleasure I ’ve so far given your little man,” laughed 
she, patting her aunt’s cheeks with her two hands, “has been 
negligible — I have his word for that — and to-night it is 
going to be the same, only more so.” 

Sharlee arose, took off her coat and furs, laid them on the 
bed, and going to the bureau began fixing her hair in the 


QUEED 17 

back before the long mirror. No matter how well a woman 
looks to the untrained, or man’s, eye, she can always put in 
some time pleasurably fixing her hair in the back. 

“Now,” said Sharlee, “to business. Tell me all about 
the little dead-beat.” 

“It is four weeks next Monday,” said Mrs. Paynter, 
putting a shoe-horn in her novel to mark the place, “since 
the young man came to me. He was from New York, and 
just off the train. He said that he had been recommended 
to my house, but would not say by whom, nor could he give 
references. I did not insist on them, for I can’t be too strict, 
Sharlee, with all the other boarding- places there are and 
that room standing empty for two months hand-running, 
and then for three months before that, before Miss Catlett, 
I mean. The fact is, that I ought to be over on the Avenue, 
where I could have only the best people. It would be in- 
finitely more lucrative — why, my dear, you should hear 
Amy Marsden talk of her enormous profits! And Amy, 
while a dear, sweet little woman, is not clever! I remember 
as girls — but to go back even of that to the very heart of 
the matter, who ever heard of a clever Wilkerson ? For she, 
you know, was born ...” 

“Never you mind Mrs. Marsden, Aunt Jennie,” said the 
girl, gently drawing her back to the muttons, — “we’ll make 
lots more money than she some day. So you gave him the 
room, then?” 

“Yes, the room known as the third hall back. A small, 
neat, economical room, entirely suitable for a single gentle- 
man. I gave him my lowest price, though I must say I did 
not dream then that he would spend all his time in his room, 
apparently having no downtown occupation, which is cer- 
tainly not what one expects from gentlemen, who get low 
terms on the silent understanding that they will take them- 
selves out of the house directly after breakfast. Nevertheless 
— will you believe it? — ten days passed and not a word was 
said about payment. So one morning I stopped him in the 
hall, as though for a pleasant talk. However, I was careful 


18 OUEED 

to introduce the point, by means of an anecdote I told him, 
that guests here were expected to pay by the week. Of 
course I supposed that the hint would be sufficient.” 

“But it was n’t, alas?” 

“On the contrary, ten days again passed, and you might 
suppose there was no such thing as money in all this world. 
Then I resolved to approach him directly. I knocked on his 
door, and when he opened it, I told him plainly and in so 
many words that I would be very much gratified if he would 
let me have a check whenever convenient, as unfortun- 
ately I had heavy bills due that must be met. I was very 
much mortified, Sharlee! As I stood there facing that young 
man, dunning him like a grocer’s clerk, it flashed into my 
mind to wonder what your great-grandfather, the Governor, 
would think if he could have looked down and seen me. For 
as you know, my dear, though I doubt if you altogether real- 
ize it at all times, since our young people of to-day, I regret 
to have to say it — though of course I do except you from 
this criticism — ” 

By gentle interruption and deft transition, Sharlee once 
more wafted the conversation back to the subject in hand. 
“And when you went so far as to tell him this, how did he 
take it?” 

“He took it admirably. He told me that I need feel no 
concern about the matter; that while out of funds for the 
moment, doubtless he would be in funds again shortly. His 
manner was dignified, calm, unabashed — ” 

“But it did n’t blossom, as we might say, in money?” 

“As to that — no. What are you to do, Sharlee? I feel 
sure the man is not dishonest, — in fact he has a singularly 
honest face, transparently so, — but he is only somehow 
queer. He appears an engrossed, absent-minded young man 
— what is the word I want? — an eccentric. That is what 
he is, an engrossed young eccentric.” 

Sharlee leaned against the bureau and looked at her aunt 
thoughtfully. “Do you gather, Aunt Jennie, that he’s 
a gentleman?” 


QUEED 19 

Mrs. Paynter threw out her hands helplessly. “What 
does the term mean nowadays? The race of gentlemen, as 
the class existed in my day, seems to be disappearing from 
the face of the earth. We see occasional survivals of the 
old order, like Gardiner West or the young Byrd men, but 
as a whole — well, my dear, I will only say that the modern 
standards would have excited horror fifty years ago and 

“Well, but according to the modern standards, do you 
think he is? ” 

“ I don't know. He is and he is n’t. But no — no — no! 
He is not one. No man can be a gentleman who is utterly 
indifferent to the comfort and feelings of others, do you 
think so?” 

“Indeed, no! And is that what he is?” 

“I will illustrate by an incident,” said Mrs. Paynter. 
“As I say, this young man spends his entire time in his 
room, where he is, I believe, engaged in writing a book.” 

“ Oh, me ! Then he ’s penniless, depend upon it.” 

“Well, when we had the frost and freeze early last week, 
he came to me one night and complained of the cold in his 
room. You know, Sharlee, I do not rent that room as a sit- 
ting-room, nor do I expect to heat it, at the low price, other 
than the heat from the halls. So I invited him to make use 
of the dining-room in the evenings, which, as you know, 
with the folding-doors drawn, and the yellow lamp lit, is 
converted to all intents and purposes into a quiet and com- 
fortable reading-room. Somewhat grumblingly he went 
down. Fifi was there as usual, doing her algebra by the 
lamp. The young man took not the smallest notice of her, 
and presently when she coughed several times — the child’s 
cold happened to be bad that night — he looked up sharply 
and asked her please to stop. Fifi said that she was afraid she 
could n’t help it. He replied that it was impossible for him 
to work in the room with a noise of that sort, and either 
the noise or he would have to vacate. So Fifi gathered up 
her things and left. I found her, half an hour later, in her 


30 QUEED 

little bed-room, which was ice-cold, coughing and crying 
over her sums, which she was trying to work at the bureau. 
That was how I found out about it. The child would never 
have said a word to me.” 

“How simply outrageous!” said the girl, and became 
silent and thoughtful. 

“Well, what do you think I’d better do, Sharlee?” 

“ I think you’d better let me waylay him in the hall after 
supper and tell him that the time has come when he must 
either pay up or pack up.” 

“My dear! Can you well be as blunt as that?” 

“Dear Aunt Jennie, as I view it, you are not running an 
eleemosynary institution here?” 

“Of course not,” replied Aunt Jennie, who really did not 
know whether she was or not. 

Sharlee dropped into a chair and began manicuring her 
pretty little nails. “The purpose of this establishment is to 
collect money from the transient and resident public. Now 
you’re not a bit good at collecting money because you’re 
so well-bred, but I’m not so awfully well-bred — ” 

“You are — ” 

“ I ’m bold — blunt — brazen! I ’m forward. I ’m reso- 
lute and grim. In short, I belong to the younger generation 
which you despise so — ” 

“I don’t despise you, you dear — ” 

“Come,” said Sharlee, springing up; “let’s go down. 
I’m wild to meet Mr. Bylash again. Is he wearing the 
moleskin vest to-night, do you know? I was fascinated 
by it the last time I was here. Aunt Jennie, what is the 
name of this young man — the one I may be compelled to 
bounce?” 

“His name is Queed. Did you ever — ?” 

“Queed? Queed? Q-u-e-e-d?” 

“An odd name, is n’t it? There were no such people in 
my day.” 

“Probably after to-morrow there will be none such once 
more.” 


QUEED 


21 


“Mr. Klinker has christened him the little Doctor — a 
hit at his appearance and studious habits, you see — and 
even the servants have taken it up.” 

“Aunt Jennie,” said Sharlee at the door, “when you 
introduce the little Doctor to me, refer to me as your busi- 
ness woman, won’t you? Say ‘This is my niece, Miss 
Weyland, who looks after my business affairs for me,’ or 
something like that, will you? It will explain to him why I, 
a comparative stranger, show such an interest in his finan- 
cial affairs.” 

Mrs. Paynter said, “Certainly, my dear,” and they went 
down, the older lady disappearing toward the dining-room. 
In the parlor Sharlee was greeted cordially and somewhat 
respectfully. Major Brooke, who appeared to have taken 
an extra toddy in honor of her coming, or for any other 
reason why, flung aside his newspaper and seized both her 
hands. Mr. Bylash, in the moleskin waistcoat, sure enough, 
bowed low and referred to her agreeably as “stranger,” 
nor did he again return to Miss Miller’s side on the sofa. 
That young lady was gay and giggling, but watchful withal. 
When Sharlee was not looking, Miss Miller’s eye, rather 
hard now, roved over her ceaselessly from the point of her 
toe to the top of her feather. What was the trick she had, 
the little way with her, that so delightfully unlocked the 
gates of gentlemen’s hearts? 

At supper they were lively and gay. The butter and 
preserves were in front of Sharlee, for her to help to; by 
her side sat Fifi, the young daughter of the house. Major 
Brooke sat at the head of the table and carved the Porter- 
house, upon which when the eyes of William Klinker fell, 
they irrepressibly shot forth gleams. At the Major’s right 
sat his wife, a pale, depressed, nervous woman, as anybody 
who had lived thirty years with the gallant officer her hus- 
band had a right to be. She was silent, but the Major talked 
a great deal, not particularly well. Much the same may be 
said of Mr. Bylash and Miss Miller. Across the table from 
Mrs. Brooke stood an empty chair. It belonged to the little 


* 22 QUEED 

Doctor, Mr. Queed. Across the table from Sharlee stood an- 
other. This one belonged to the old professor, Nicolovius. 
When the meal was well along, Nicolovius came in, bowed 
around the table in his usual formal way, and silently took 
his place. While Sharlee liked everybody in the boarding- 
house, including Miss Miller, Professor Nicolovius was the 
only one of them that she considered at all interesting. 
This was because of his strongly-cut face, like the grand- 
ducal villain in a ten-twenty-thirty melodrama, and his 
habit of saying savage things in a soft, purring voice. He 
was rude to everybody, and particularly rude, so Sharlee 
thought, to her. As for the little Doctor, he did not come 
in at all. Half-way through supper, Sharlee looked at her 
aunt and gave a meaning glance at the empty seat. 

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Mrs. Paynter 
sotto voce. “He’s usually so regular.” 

To the third floor she dispatched the colored girl Emma, 
to knock upon Mr. Queed ’s door. Presently Emma re- 
turned with the report that she had knocked, but could 
obtain no answer. 

“He’s probably fallen asleep over his book,” murmured 
Sharlee. “I feel certain it’s that kind of book.” 

But Mrs. Paynter said that he rarely slept, even at night. 

“. . . Right on my own front porch, mind you!” Major 
Brooke was declaiming. “And, gentlemen, I shook my finger 
in his face and said, ‘Sir, I never yet met a Republican who 
was not a rogue!’ Yes, sir, that is just what I told him — ” 

“I’m afraid,” said Nicolovius, smoothly, — it was the 
only word he uttered during the meal, — “your remark 
harrows Miss Weyland with reminders of the late Mr. 
Surface.” 

The Major stopped short, and a silence fell over the table. 
It was promptly broken by Mrs. Paynter, who invited Mrs. 
Brooke to have a second cup of coffee. Sharlee looked at 
her plate and said nothing. Everybody thought that the 
old professor’s remark was in bad taste, for it was gener- 
ally known that Henry G. Surface was one subject that even 


OUEED 23 

Miss Weyland’s intimate friends never mentioned to her. 
Nicolovius, however, appeared absolutely unconcerned by 
the boarders’ silent rebuke. He ate on, rapidly but abstemi- 
ously, and finished before Mr. Bylash, who had had twenty 
minutes’ start of him. 

The last boarder rising drew shut the folding-doors into 
the parlor, while the ladies of the house remained to super- 
intend and assist in clearing off the supper things. The 
last boarder this time was Mr. Bylash, who tried without 
success to catch Miss Weyland’s eye as he slid to the doors. 
He hung around in the parlor waiting for her till 8.30, at 
which time, having neither seen nor heard sign of her, he 
took Miss Miller out to the moving-picture shows. In the 
dining-room, when Emma had trayed out the last of the 
things, the ladies put away the unused silver, watered the 
geranium, set back some of the chairs, folded up the white 
cloth, placing it in the sideboard drawer, spread the pretty 
Turkey-red one in its stead, set the reading lamp upon it; 
and just then the clock struck eight. 

“Now then,” said Sharlee. 

So the three sat down and held a council of war as to how 
little Doctor Queed, the young man who would n’t pay 
his board, was to be brought into personal contact with 
Charlotte Lee Weyland, the grim and resolute collector. 
Various stratagems were proposed, amid much merriment. 
But the collector herself adhered to her original idea of a 
masterly waiting game. 

“Only trust me,” said she. “He can’t spend the rest of 
his life shut up in that room in a state of dreadful siege. 
Hunger or thirst will force him out; he’ll want to buy some 
of those apples, or to mail a letter — ” 

Fifi, who sat on the arm of Sharlee’s chair, laughed and 
coughed. “ He never writes any. And he never has gotten 
but one, and that came to-night.” 

“Fifi, did you take your syrup before supper? Well, go 
and take it this minute.” 

“Mother, it does n’t do any good.” 


24 QUEED 

“The doctor gave it to you, my child, and it’s going to 
make you better soon.” 

Sharlee followed Kifi out with troubled eyes. However, 
Mrs. Paynter at once drew her back to the matter in hand. 

“Sharlee, do you know what would be the very way to 
settle this little difficulty? To write him a formal, business- 
like letter. We’ll — ” 

“No, I’ve thought of that, Aunt Jennie, and I don’t 
believe it ’s the way. A letter could n’t get to the bottom of 
the matter. You see, we want to find out something about 
this man, and why he is n’t paying, and whether there is 
reason to think he can and will pay. Besides, I think he 
needs a talking to on general principles.” 

“Well — but how are you going to do it, my dear?” 

“Play a Fabian game. Wait! — be stealthy and wait! 
If he does n’t come out of hiding to-night, I ’ll return for 
him to-morrow. I’ll keep on coming, night after night, 
night after night, n — Some one’s knocking — ” 

“Come in,” said Mrs. Paynter, looking up. 

The door leading into the hall opened, and the man him- 
self stood upon the threshold, looking at them absently. 

“May I have some supper, Mrs. Paynter? I was closely 
engaged and failed to notice the time.” 

Sharlee arose. “Certainly. I’ll get you some at once,” 
she answered innocently enough. But to herself she was 
saying: “The Lord has delivered him into my hand.” 


Encounter between Charlotte Lee Weyland, a Landlady's 
Agent , and Doctor Queed, a Young Man who would n't pay 
his Board. 


S HARLEE glanced at Mrs. Paynter, who caught her- 
self and said: “Mr. Queed, my niece — Miss Wey- 
land .” 

But over the odious phrase, “my business woman,” 
her lips boggled and balked; not to save her life could she 
bring herself to damn her own niece with such an intro- 
duction. 

Noticing the omission and looking through the reasons 
for it as through window-glass, Sharlee smothered a laugh, 
and bowed. Mr. Queed bowed, but did not laugh or even 
smile. He drew up a chair at his usual place and sat down. 
As by an involuntary reflex, his left hand dropped toward 
his coat-pocket, whence the top edges of a book could be 
descried protruding. Mrs. Paynter moved vaguely toward 
the door. As for her business woman, she made at once for 
the kitchen, where Emma and her faithful co-worker and 
mother, Laura, rose from their supper to assist her. With 
her own hands the girl cut a piece of the Porterhouse for 
Mr. Queed. Creamed potatoes, two large spoonfuls, were 
added ; two rolls ; some batterbread ; coffee, which had to be 
diluted with a little hot water to make out the full cup; 
butter; damson preserves in a saucer: all of which duly set 
forth and arranged on a shiny black “waiter.” 

“Enough for a whole platform of doctors,” said Sharlee, 
critically reviewing the spread. “Thank you, Emma.” 

She took the tray in both hands and pushed open the 
swing-doors with her side, thus making her ingress to the 
dining-room in a sort of crab-fashion. Mrs. Paynter was 


26 QUEED 

gone. Mr. Queed sat alone in the dining-room. His book 
lay open on the table and he was humped over it, hand in 
his hair. 

Having set her tray on the side-table, Sharlee came to his 
side with the plate of steak and potatoes. He did not stir, 
and presently she murmured, “I beg your pardon.” 

He looked up half-startled, not seeming to take in for the 
first second who or what she was. 

“Oh . . . yes.” 

He moved his book, keeping his finger in the place, and 
she set down the plate. Next she brought the appurten- 
ances one by one, the butter, coffee, and so on. The old 
mahogany sideboard yielded knife, fork, and spoon; salt 
and pepper; from the right-hand drawer, a fresh napkin. 
These placed, she studied them, racked her brains a mo- 
ment and, from across the table — 

“Is there anything else?” 

Mr. Queed ’s eye swept over his equipment with intelli- 
gent quickness. “A glass of water, please.” 

“Oh! — Certainly.” 

Sharlee poured a glass from the battered silver pitcher on 
the side-table — the one that the Yankees threw out of the 
window in May, 1862 — and duly placed it. Mr. Queed was 
oblivious to the little courtesy. By this time he had propped 
his book open against the plate of rolls and was reading it 
between cuts on the steak. Beside the plate he had laid 
his watch, an open-faced nickel one about the size of a 
desk-clock. 

“Do you think that is everything?” 

“ I believe that is all.” 

“Do you remember me?” then asked Sharlee. 

He glanced at her briefly through his spectacles, his eyes 
soon returning to his supper. 

“ I think not.” 

The girl smiled suddenly, all by herself. “It was my dog 
that — upset you on Main Street this afternoon. You 
may remember . . .? I thought you seemed to — to limp 


OUEED 27 

a little when you came in just now. I’m awfully sorry for 
the — mishap — ” 

“It is of no consequence,” he said, with some signs of un- 
rest. “ I walk seldom. Your — pleasure-dog was uninjured, 
I trust?” 

“Thank you. He was never better.” 

That the appearance of the pleasure-dog’s owner as a 
familiar of his boarding-house piqued his curiosity not the 
slightest was only too evident. He bowed, his eyes return- 
ing from steak to book. 

“ I am obliged to you for getting my supper.” 

If he had said, “Will you kindly go?” his meaning could 
hardly have been more unmistakable. However, Mrs. 
Paynter’s resolute agent held her ground. Taking advan- 
tage of his gross absorption, she now looked the delin- 
quent boarder over with some care. At first glance Mr. 
Queed looked as if he might have been born in a library, 
where he had unaspiringly settled down. To support this 
impression there were his pallid complexion and enormous 
round spectacles; his dusty air of premature age; his gen- 
eral effect of dried-up detachment from his environment. 
One noted, too, the tousled mass of nondescript hair, which 
he wore about a month too long; the necktie-band triumph- 
ing over the collar in the back ; the collar itself, which had a 
kind of celluloid look and shone with a blue unwholesome 
sheen under the gas-light. On the other hand there was the 
undeniably trim cut of the face, which gave an unexpected 
and contradictory air of briskness. The nose was bold ; the 
long straight mouth might have belonged to a man of ac- 
tion. Probably the great spectacles were the turning-point 
in the man’s’ whole effect. You felt that if you could get your 
hands on him long enough to pull those off, and cut his hair, 
you might have an individual who would not so surely have 
been christened the Kttle Doctor. 

These details the agent gathered at her leisure. Mean- 
time here was the situation, stark and plain; and she, and 
she alone, must handle it. She must tell this young man, 


28 OUEED 

so frankly engrossed in his mental and material food, which 
he ate by his watch, that he must fork over four times 
seven-fifty or vacate the premises. ... Yes, but how to do 
it? He could not be much older than she herself, but his 
manner was the most impervious, the most impossible 
that she had ever seen. “I’m grim and I’m resolute,” she 
said over to herself ; but the splendid defiance of the motto 
failed to quicken her blood. Not even the recollection of the 
month’s sponge for board and the house-rent due next week 
spurred her to action. Then she thought of Fifi, whom Mr. 
Queed had packed off sobbing for his good pleasure, and her 
resolution hardened. 

“ I ’m afraid I must interrupt your reading for a moment,” 
she said quietly. “ There is something I want to say . . . .” 

He glanced up for the second time. There was surprise 
and some vexation in the eyes behind his circular glasses, 
but no sign of any interest. 

“Well?” 

“When my aunt introduced you to me just now she did 
not — did not identify me as she should — ” 

“Really, does it make any difference?” 

“Yes, I think it does. You see, I am not only her niece, 
but her business woman, her agent, as well. She is n’t very 
good at business, but still she has a good deal of it to be 
done. She runs this boarding-place, and people of various 
kinds come to her and she takes them into her house. Many 
of these people are entirely unknown to her. In this way 
trouble sometimes arises. For instance people come now and 
then who — how shall I put it? — are very reserved about 
making their board-payments. My aunt hardly knows how 
to deal with them — ” 

He interrupted her with a gesture and a glance at his 
watch. “It always seems to me an unnecessary waste of 
time not to be direct. You have called to collect my arrear- 
age for board? ” 

“Well, yes. I have.” 

“Please tell your aunt that when I told her to give herself 


QUEED 29 

no concern about that matter, I exactly meant what I said. 
To-night I received funds through the mail; the sum, 
twenty dollars. Your aunt,” said he, obviously ready to 
return to his reading matter, “shall have it all.” 

But Sharlee had heard delinquent young men talk like 
that before, and her business platform in these cases was 
to be introduced to their funds direct. 

“That would cut down the account nicely,” said she, 
looking at him pleasantly, but a shade too hard to imply 
a beautiful trust. She went on much like the firm young 
lady enumerators who take the census: “By the way — let 
me ask: Have you any regular business or occupation?” 

“Not, I suppose, in the sense in which you mean the 
interrogation.” 

“Perhaps you have friends in the city, who — ” 

1 ‘ F riends ! Here ! Good Lord — no!” said he, with exas- 
perated vehemence. 

“I gather,” was surprised from her, “that you do not 
wish — ” 

“They are the last thing in the world that I desire. My 
experience in that direction in New York quite sufficed me, 
I assure you. I came here,” said he, with rather too blunt 
an implication, “to be let alone.” 

“I was thinking of references, you know. You have 
friends in New York, then?” 

“Yes, I have two. But I doubt if you would regard them 
as serviceable for references. The best of them is only a 
policeman ; the other is a yeggman by trade — his brother, 
by the way.” 

She was silent a moment, wondering if he were telling 
the truth, and deciding what to say next. The young man 
used the silence to bolt his coffee at a gulp and go hurriedly 
but deeply into the preserves. 

“My aunt will be glad that you can make a remittance 
to-night. I will take it to her for you with pleasure.” 

“Oh!— All right.” 

He put his hand into his outer breast-pocket, pulled out 


30 QUEED 

an envelope, and absently pitched it across the table. She 
looked at it and saw that it was postmarked the city and 
bore a typewritten address. 

“Am I to open this?” 

“Oh, as you like,” said he, and, removing the spoon, turned 
a page. 

The agent picked up the envelope with anticipations of 
helpful clues. It was her business to find out everything 
that she could about Mr. Queed. A determinedly moneyless, 
friendless, and vocationless young man could not daily stretch 
his limbs under her aunt’s table and retain the Third Hall 
Back against more compensatory guests. But the letter 
proved a grievous disappointment to her. Inside was a 
folded sheet of cheap white paper, apparently torn from a 
pad. Inside the sheet was a new twenty-dollar bill. That was 
all. Apart from the address, there was no writing anywhere. 

Yet the crisp greenback, incognito though it came, indu- 
bitably suggested that Mr. Queed was not an entire stranger 
to the science of money-making. 

“Ah,” said the agent, insinuatingly, “ evidently you have 
some occupation, after all — of — of a productive sort. ...” 

He looked up again with that same air of vexed surprise, 
as much as to say: “What! You still hanging around!” 

“I don’t follow you, I fear.” 

“I assume that this money comes to you in payment for 
some — work you have done — ” 

“It is an assumption, certainly.” 

“You can appreciate, perhaps, that I am not idly inquisi- 
tive. I should n’t — ” 

“What is it that you wish to know?” 

“As to this money — ” 

“Really, you know as much about it as I do. It came 
exactly as I handed it to you : the envelope, the blank paper, 
and the bill.” 

“But you know, of course, where it comes from?” 

“ I can’t say I do. Evidently,” said Mr. Queed, “ it is 
intended as a gift.” 


QUEED 31 

“Then — perhaps you have a good friend here after all? 
Some one who has guessed — ” 

“I think I told you that I have but two friends, and I 
know for a certainty that they are both in New York. Be- 
sides, neither of them would give me twenty dollars.” 

“But — but — but,” said the girl, laughing through her 
utter bewilderment — “are n’t you interested to know who 
did give it to you ? Are n’t you curious ? I assure you that in 
this city it’s not a bit usual to get money through the mails 
from anonymous admirers — ” 

“ Nor did I say that this was a usual case. I told you that 
I did n’t know who sent me this.” 

“Exactly—” 

“But I have an idea. I think my father sent it.” 

“Oh! Your father. . . .” 

So he had a father, an eccentric but well-to-do father, 
who, though not a friend, yet sent in twenty dollars now 
and then to relieve his son’s necessities. Sharlee felt her 
heart rising. 

“Don’t think me merely prying. You see I am naturally 
interested in the question of whether you — will find your- 
self able to stay on here — ” 

“You refer to my ability to make my board pay- 
ments?” 

“Yes.” 

Throughout this dialogue, Mr. Queed had been eating, 
steadily and effectively. Now he slid his knife and fork into 
place with a pained glance at his watch ; and simultaneously 
a change came over his face, a kind of tightening, shot 
through with Christian fortitude, which plainly advertised 
an unwelcome resolution. 

“My supper allowance of time,” he began warningly, 
“is practically up. However, I suppose the definite settle- 
ment of this board question cannot be postponed further. I 
must not leave you under any misapprehensions. If this 
money came from my father, it is the first I ever had from 
him in my life. Whether I am to get any more from him 


32 OUEED 

is problematical, to say the least. Due consideration must 
be given the fact that he and I have never met.” 

“Oh! . . . Does — he live here, in the city?” 

“I have some reason to believe that he does. It is in- 
deed,” Mr. Queed set forth to his landlady’s agent, “be- 
cause of that belief that I have come here. I have assumed, 
with good grounds, that he would promptly make himself 
known to me, take charge of things, and pay my board; 
but though I have been here nearly a month, he has so far 
made not the slightest move in that direction, unless we 
count this letter. Possibly he leaves it to me to find him, 
but I, on my part, have no time to spare for any such un- 
dertaking. I make the situation clear to you? Under the 
circumstances I cannot promise you a steady revenue from 
my father. On the other hand, . for all that I know, it may 
be his plan to send me money regularly after this.” 

There was a brief pause. “But — apart from the money 
consideration — have you no interest in finding him?” 

“Oh — if that is all one asks! But it happens not to be 
a mere question of my personal whim. Possibly you can 
appreciate the fact that finding a father is a tremendous 
task when you have no idea where he lives, or what he looks 
like, or what name he may be using. My time is wholly 
absorbed by my own work. I have none to give to a wild- 
goose chase such as that, on the mere chance that, if found, 
he would agree to pay my board for the future.” 

If he had been less in earnest he would have been gro- 
tesque. As it was, Sharlee was by no means sure that he 
escaped it; and she could not keep a controversial note out 
of her voice as she said : — 

“Yours must be a very great work to make you view the 
finding of your father in that way.” 

“The greatest in the world,” he answered, drily. “I may 
call it, loosely, evolutionary sociology.” 

She was so silent after this, and her expression was so 
peculiar, that he concluded that his words conveyed nothing 
to her. 


QUEED 33 

“The science,” he added kindly, “which treats of the 
origin, nature, and history of human society; analyzes the 
relations of men in organized communities; formulates the 
law or laws of social progress and permanence ; and correctly 
applies these laws to the evolutionary development of human 
civilization.” 

“I am familiar with the terms. And your ambition is to 
become a great evolutionary sociologist?” 

He smiled faintly. “To become one?” 

“Oh! Then you are one already?” 

For answer, Mr. Queed dipped his hand into his inner 
pocket, produced a large wallet, and from a mass of papers 
selected a second envelope. 

“You mention references. Possibly these will impress 
you as even better than friends.” 

Sharlee, seated on the arm of Major Brooke’s chair, ran 
through the clippings: two advertisements of a well-known 
“heavy” review announcing articles by Mr. Queed; a 
table of contents torn from a year-old number of the Po- 
litical Science Quarterly to the same effect; an editorial 
from a New York newspaper commenting on one of these 
articles and speaking laudatorily of its author; a private 
letter from the editor of the “heavy” urging Mr. Queed to 
write another article on a specified subject, “Sociology and 
Socialism.” 

To Sharlee the exhibit seemed surprisingly formidable, 
but the wonder in her eyes was not at that. Her marvel was 
for the fact that the man who was capable of so cruelly 
elbowing little Kifi out of his way should be counted a 
follower of the tenderest and most human of sciences. 

“They impress me,” she said, returning his envelope; 
“but not as better than friends.” 

“Ah? A matter of taste. Now — ” 

“I had always supposed,” continued the girl, looking at 
him, “ that sociology had a close relation with life — in fact, 
that it was based on a conscious recognition of — the brother- 
hood of man.” 


34 QUEED 

“Your supposition is doubtless sound, though you express 
it so loosely — ” 

“Yet you feel that the sociologist has no such relation?” 

He glanced up sharply. At the subtly hostile look in her 
eyes, his expression became, for the first time, a little inter- 
ested. 

“How do you deduce that?” 

“Oh! . . . It is loose, if you like — but I deduce it from 
what you have said — and implied — about your father 
and — having friends.” 

But what she thought of, most of all, was the case of 
Fifi. 

She stood across the table, facing him, looking down at 
him; and there was a faintly heightened color in her cheeks. 
Her eyes were the clearest lapis lazuli, heavily fringed with 
lashes which were blacker than Egypt’s night. Her chin 
was finely and strongly cut; almost a masculine chin, but 
unmasculinely softened by the sweetness of her mouth. 

Mr. Queed eyed her with some impatience through his 
round spectacles. 

“You apparently jumble together the theory and what 
you take to be the application of a science in the attempt 
to make an impossible unit. Hence your curious confusion. 
Theory and application are as totally distinct as the poles. 
The few must discover for the many to use. My own task — 
since the matter appears to interest you — is to work out the 
laws of human society for those who come after to practice 
and apply.” 

“And suppose those who come after feel the same unwill- 
ingness to practice and apply that you, let us say, feel?” 

“It becomes the business of government to persuade 
them.” 

“And if government shirks also? What is government 
but the common expression of masses of individuals very 
much like yourself?” 

“There you return, you see, to your fundamental error. 
There are very few individuals in the least like me. I hap- 


OUEED 35 

pen to be writing a book of great importance, not to myself 
merely, but to posterity. If I fail to finish my book, if I am 
delayed in finishing it, I can hardly doubt that the world 
will be the loser. This is not a task like organizing a pro- 
longed search for one’s father, or dawdling with friends, which 
a million men can do equally well. I alone can write m>- 
book. Perhaps you now grasp my duty of concentrating all 
my time and energy on this single work and ruthlessly 
eliminating whatever interferes with it.” 

The girl found his incredible egoism at once amusing and 
extremely exasperating. 

“Have you ever thought,” she asked, “that thousands 
of other self-absorbed men have considered their own 
particular work of supreme importance, and that most of 
them have been — mistaken?” 

“Really I have nothing to do with other men’s mistakes. 
I am responsible only for my own.” 

“And that is why it is a temptation to suggest that con- 
ceivably you had made one here.” 

“But you find difficulty in suggesting such a thought 
convincingly? That is because I have not conceivably made 
any such mistake. A Harvey must discover the theory of 
the circulation of the blood ; it is the business of lesser men 
to apply the discovery to practical ends. It takes a Whitney 
to invent the cotton gin, but the dullest negro roustabout 
can operate it. Why multiply illustrations of a truism? 
Theory, you perceive, calls for other and higher gifts than ap- 
plication. The man who can formulate the eternal laws of 
social evolution can safely leave it to others to put his laws 
into practice.” 

Sharlee gazed at him in silence, and he returned her gaze, 
his face wearing a look of the rankest complacence that she 
had ever seen upon a human countenance. But all at once 
his eyes fell upon his watch, and his brow clouded. 

“Meantime,” he went on abruptly, “there remains the 
question of my board.” 

“Yes. . . . Do I understand that you — derive your 


36 QUEED 

living from these social laws that you write up for others 
to practice?” 

“Oh, no — impossible! There is no living to be made 
there. When my book comes out there may be a different 
story, but that is two years and ten months off. Every 
minute taken from it for the making of money is, as you 
may now understand, decidedly unfortunate. Still,” he 
added depressedly, “I must arrange to earn something, I 
suppose, since my father’s assistance is so problematical. I 
worked for money in New York, for awhile.” 

44 Oh — did you?” 

“Yes, I helped a lady write a thesaurus.” 

“Oh. . . .” 

“It was a mere fad with her. I virtually wrote the work 
for her and charged her five dollars an hour.” He looked 
at her narrowly. “ Do you happen to know of any one here 
who wants work of that sort done?” 

The agent did not answer. By a series of covert glances 
she had been trying to learn, upside down, what it was that 
Mr. Queed was reading. “Sociology,” she had easily picked 
out, but the chapter heading, on the opposite page, was more 
troublesome, and, deeply absorbed, she had now just suc- 
ceeded in deciphering it. The particular division of his sub- 
ject in which Mr. Queed was so much engrossed was called 
“Man’s Duty to His Neighbors.” 

Struck by the silence, Sharlee looked up with a small 
start, and the faintest possible blush. “I beg your par- 
don?” 

“I asked if you knew of any lady here, a wealthy one, 
who would like to write a thesaurus as a fad.” 

The girl was obliged to admit that, at the moment, she 
could think of no such person. But her mind fastened at 
once on the vulgar, hopeful fact that thfe unsocial sociol- 
ologist wanted a job. 

“That’s unfortunate,” said Mr. Queed. “I suppose I 
must accept a little regular, very remunerative work — to 
settle this board question once and for all. An hour or two 


QUEED 37 

a day, at most. However, it is not easy to lay one’s hand 
on such work in a strange city.” 

“Perhaps,” said Miss Weyland slowly, “I can help you.” 

“I’m sure I hope so,” said he with another flying glance 
at his watch. “That is what I have been approaching for 
seven minutes.” 

“Don’t you always find it an unnecessary waste of time 
not to be direct?” 

He sat, slightly frowning, impatiently fingering the pages 
of his book. The hit bounded off him like a rubber ball 
thrown against the Great Wall of China. 

“Well?” he demanded. “What have you to propose?” 

The agent sat down in a chair across the table, William 
Klinker’s chair, and rested her chin upon her shapely little 
hand. The other shapely little hand toyed with the crisp 
twenty dollar bill, employing it to trace geometric designs 
upon the colored table-cloth. Mr. Queed had occasion to 
consult his watch again before she raised her head. 

“I propose,” she said, “that you apply for some special 
editorial work on the Post .” 

“The Post ? The Post ? The morning newspaper here?” 

“One of them.” 

He laughed, actually laughed. It was a curious, slow 
laugh, betraying that the muscles which accomplished it 
were flabby for want of exercise. 

“And who writes the editorials on the Post now?” 

“A gentleman named Colonel Cowles — ” 

“Ah! His articles on taxation read as if they might have 
been written by a military man. I happened to read one the 
day before yesterday. It was most amusing — ” 

“Excuse me. Colonel Cowles is a friend of mine — ” 

“What has that got to do with his political economy? 
If he is your friend, then I should say that you have a most 
amusing friend.” 

Sharlee rose, decidedly irritated. “Well — that is my 
suggestion. I believe you will find it worth thinking over, 
Good-night.” 


38 QUEED 

“The Post pays its contributors well, I suppose?” 

“That you would have to take up with its owners.” 

“Clearly the paper needs the services of an expert — 
though, of course, I could not give it much time, only enough 
to pay for my keep. The suggestion is not a bad one — not 
at all. As to applying, as you call it, is this amiable Colonel 
Cowles the person to be seen?” 

“Yes. No — wait a minute.” She had halted in her pro- 
gress to the door; her mind’s eye conjured up a probable 
interview between the Colonel and the scientist, and she 
hardly had the heart to let it go at that. Moreover, she 
earnestly wished, for Mrs. Paynter’s reasons, that the ten- 
ant of the third hall back should become associated with 
the pay-envelope system of the city. “Listen,” she went 
on. “I know one of the directors of the Post , and shall be 
glad to speak to him in your behalf. Then, if there is an 
opening, I ’ll send you, through my aunt, a card of in re- 
duction to him and you can go to see him.” 

“Couldn’t he come to see me? I am enormously 
busy.” 

“So is he. I doubt if you could expect him to — ” 

“H’m. Very well. I am obliged to you for your sugges- 
tion. Of course I shall take no step in the matter until I 
hear from you.” 

“Good-evening,” said the agent, icily. 

He bowed slightly in answer to the salute, uttering no 
further word ; for him the interview ended right there, cleanly 
and satisfactorily. From the door the girl glanced back. Mr. 
Queed had drawn his heavy book before him, pencil in hand, 
and was once more engrossed in the study and annotation 
of “Man’s Duty to His Neighbors.” 

In the hall Sharlee met Fifi, who was tipping toward the 
dining-room to discover, by the frank method of ear and 
keyhole, how the grim and resolute collector was faring. 

“You’re still alive, Sharlee! Any luck?” 

“The finest in the world, darling! Twenty dollars in the 
hand and a remunerative job for him in the bush.” 


QUEED 39 

Fifi did a few steps of a minuet. “Hooray!” said she in 
her weak little voice. 

Sharlee put her arms around the child’s neck and said in 
her ear: “Fifi, be very gentle with that young man. He’s 
the most pitiful little creature I ever saw.” 

“Why,” said Fifi, “I don’t think he feels that way at 
all—” 

“Don’t you see that’s just what makes him so infinitely 
pathetic? He’s the saddest little man in the world, and it 
has never dawned on him.” 

It was not till some hours later, when she was making 
ready for bed in her own room, that it occurred to Sharlee 
that there was something odd in this advice to her little 
cousin. For she had started out with the intention to teli 
Mr. Queed that he must be very gentle with Fifi. 


IV 

Relating how Two Stars in their Courses fought for Mr . 
Queed; and how he accepted Remunerative Employment 
under Colonel Cowles , the Military Political Economist . 

T HE stars in their courses fought for Mr. Queed in those 
days. Somebody had to fight for him, it seemed, 
since he was so little equipped to fight for himself, 
and the stars kindly undertook the assignment. Not merely 
had he attracted the militant services of the bright little ce- 
lestial body whose earthly agent was Miss Charlotte Lee Wey- 
land ; but this little body chanced to be one of a system or 
galaxy, associated with and exercising a certain power, akin 
to gravitation, over that strong and steady planet known 
among men as Charles Gardiner West. And the very next 
day, the back of the morning’s mail being broken, the little 
star used some of its power to draw the great planet to the 
telephone, while feeling, in a most unstellar way, that it was 
a decidedly cheeky thing to do. However, nothing could 
have exceeded the charming radiance of Planet West, and it 
was he himself who introduced the topic of Mr. Queed, by 
inquiring, in mundane language, whether or not he had been 
fired. 

“No!” laughed the star. “Instead of firing him, I’m now 
bent on hiring him. Oh, you ’d better not laugh ! It ’s to you 
I want to hire him!” 

But at that the shining Planet laughed the more. 

“What have I done to be worthy of this distinction? Also, 
what can I do with him? To paraphrase his own inimitable 
remark about your dog, what is the object of a man like that? 
What is he for?” 

Sharlee dilated on the renown of Mr. Queed as a writer 
upon abstruse themes. Mr. West was not merely agreeable; 


QUEED 41 

he was interested. It seemed that at the very last meeting of 
the Post directors — to which body Mr. West had been 
elected at the stockholders’ meeting last June — it had been 
decided that Colonel Cowles should have a little help in the 
editorial department. The work was growing; the Colonel 
was ageing. The point had been to find the help. Who knew 
but what this little highbrow was the very man they were 
looking for? 

“ I ’ll call on him — at your aunt’s, shall I? — to-day if I 
can. Why, not a bit of it! The thanks are quite the other 
way. He may turn out another Charles A. Dana, cleverly 
disguised. When are you going to have another half-holiday 
up there?” 

Sharlee left the telephone thinking that Mr. West was 
quite the nicest man she knew. Ninety-nine men out of a 
hundred, in his position, would have said, “ Send him to see 
me.” Mr. West had said, “ I ’ll call on him at your aunt’s,” 
and had absolutely refused to pose as the gracious dispenser 
of patronage. However, a great many people shared Shar- 
lee’s opinion of Charles Gardiner West. One of them walked 
into his office at that very moment, also petitioning for 
something, and West received him with just that same un- 
affected pleasantness of manner which everybody found so 
agreeable. But this one’s business, as it happened, com- 
pletely knocked from Mr. West’s head the matter of Mr. 
Queed. In fact, he never gave it another thought. The fol- 
lowing night he went to New York with a little party of 
friends, chiefly on pleasure bent; and, having no particularly 
frugal mind, permitted himself a very happy day or so in the 
metropolis. Hence it happened that Sharlee, learning from 
her aunt that no Post directors had called forcing remunera- 
tive work on Mr. Queed, made it convenient, about five days 
after the telephone conversation, to meet Mr. West upon the 
street, quite by accident. Any girl can tell you how it is done. 

“Oh, by the way,” she said in the most casual way, “shall 
I send my little Doctor Queed to call upon you some day?” 

West was agreeably contrite ; abused himself for a shiftless 


4 2 QUEED 

Iackwit who was slated for an unwept grave; promised to 
call that very day; and, making a memorandum the instant 
he got back to the office, this time did not fail to keep his 
word. 

Not that Mr. Queed had been inconvenienced by the little 
delay. The minute after his landlady’s agent left him, he had 
become immersed in that great work of his, and there by day 
and night, he had remained. Having turned over to the agent 
the full responsibility for finding work for him, he no longer 
had to bother his head about it. The whole matter dropped 
gloriously from his mind; he read, wrote, and avoided prac- 
ticing sociology with tremendous industry; and thus he 
might have gone on for no one knows how long had there not, 
at five o’clock on the fifth day, come a knock upon his door. 

“ Well? ” he called, annoyed. 

Emma came in with a card. The name, at which the young 
man barely glanced, conveyed nothing to him. 

“Well? What does he want?” 

Emma did not know. 

“Oh! ” said Mr. Queed, irritably — “tell him to come up, 
if he must.” 

The Post director came up — two flights; he knocked ; was 
curtly bidden to enter; did so. 

He stepped into one of the smallest rooms he had ever 
seen in his life ; about nine by five-and-a-half , he thought. A 
tiny single bed ran along one side of it; jammed against the 
foot of the bed was a tiny table. A tiny chair stood at the 
table ; behind the chair stood a tiny bureau ; beside the bu- 
reau, the tiniest little iron wash-stand in the world. In the 
chair sat a man, not tiny, indeed, but certainly nobody’s 
prize giant. He sat in a kind of whirling tempest of books 
and papers, and he rode absorbedly in the whirlwind and 
majestically directed the storm. 

West was intensely interested. “Mr. Queed?” he asked, 
from just inside the door. 

“Yes,” said the other, not looking up. “What can I do for 
you? ” 


QUEED 43 

West burst out laughing; he could n’t help it. 

“Maybe you can do a great deal, Mr. Queed. On the 
other hand maybe I can do some little trifle for you. Which 
leg the boot is on nobody on earth can say at this juncture. 
I have ventured to call,” said he, “as an ambassador from 
the morning Post of this city.” 

“The Post?” 

The name instantly started Queed’ s memory to working; 
he recalled something about the Post — as yet, so it hap- 
pened, only the copy of it he had read; and he turned and 
looked around with slow professorial amusement kindling 
in his eyes. 

“Ah!” said he. “Possibly you are Colonel Cowles, the 
military political economist?” 

West was more amused than ever. “No,” said he, “on the 
contrary, West is the name, C. G. West — to correspond, 
you know, with the one on that card you have in your hand. 
I ’ll sit down here on the bed — - shall I ? — so that we can talk 
more comfortably. Sitting does help the flow of ideas so 
remarkably, don’t you find? I am trespassing on your time,” 
said he, “at the suggestion of — an acquaintance of yours, 
who has been telling me great things about your work.” 

Queed looked completely puzzled. 

“ The Post , Mr. Queed,” went on West agreeably, “is al- 
ways looking for men who can do exceptional work. There- 
fore, I have come to consider with you whether we might 
not make an arrangement to our mutual advantage.” 

At that the whole thing came back to the young man. He 
had agreed to take light remunerative work to pay his board, 
and now the day of reckoning was at hand. His heart grew 
heavy within him. 

“Well,” said he, exactly as he had said to the agent, 
“what have you to propose? ” 

“ I thought of proposing, first, that you give me some idea 
of what you have done and can do on lines useful for a daily 
newspaper. How does that method of procedure strike 
you? ” 


44 QUEED 

Queed produced his celebrated envelope of clippings. Also 
he hunted up one or two stray cuttings which proved to be 
editorials he had written on assignment, for a New York 
newspaper. West ran through them with intelligent quick- 
ness. 

“I say! These are rather fine, you know. This article 
on the income tax now — just right! — just the sort of 
thing! ” 

Queed sat with his hand clamped on his head, which was 
aching rather badly, as indeed it did about three fourths 
of the time. 

“Oh, yes,” he said wearily. 

“I take off my hat to you!” added West presently. 
“You’re rather out of my depth here, but at least I know 
enough political economy to know what is good.” 

He looked at Queed, smiling, very good-humored and 
gay, and Queed looked back at him, not very good-humored 
and anything but gay. Doubtless it would have surprised 
the young Doctor very much to know that West was feeling 
sorry for him just then, for at that moment he was feeling 
sorry for West. 

“Now look here,” said West. 

He explained how the Post desired a man to write sleep- 
inducing fillers — “occasional articles of weight and au- 
thority” was the way he put it — and wanted to know if 
such an opening would interest Mr. Queed. Queed said he 
supposed so, provided the Post took little of his time and 
paid his board in return for it. West had no doubt that 
everything could be satisfactorily arranged. 

“Colonel Cowles is the man who hires and fires,” he ex- 
plained. “Go to see him in a day or two, will you? Mean- 
time, I’ll tell him all about you.” 

Presently West smiled himself out, leaving Queed decid- 
edly relieved at the brief reprieve. He had been harried by 
the fear that his visitor would insist on his stopping to pro- 
duce an article or so while he waited. However, the time had 
come when the inevitable had to be faced. His golden pri- 


QUEED 45 

vacy must be ravished for the grim god of bread and meat. 
The next afternoon he put on his hat with a bad grace, and 
went forth to seek Colonel Cowles, editor-in-chief of the 
leading paper in the State. 

The morning Post was an old paper, which had been in 
the hands of a single family from A. d. 1846 till only the 
other day. It had been a power during the war, a favorite 
mouthpiece of President Davis. It had stood like a wall 
during the cruelties of Reconstruction ; had fought the good 
fight for white man’s rule ; had crucified carpet-baggism and 
scalawaggery upon a cross of burning adjective. Later it 
had labored gallantly for Tilden; denounced Hayes as a 
robber; idolized Cleveland; preached free trade with pure 
passion; swallowed free silver; stood “ regular,” though not 
without grimaces, through Bryanism. The Post was, in 
short, a paper with an honorable history, and everybody 
felt a kind of affection for it. The plain fact remained, 
however, that within recent years a great many worthy 
persons had acquired the habit of reading the more hustling 
State. 

The Post , not to put too fine a point upon it, had for a 
time run fast to seed. The third generation of its owners 
had lost their money, mostly in land speculations in the 
suburbs of New York City, and in the State of Oregon. 
You could have thrown a brick from their office windows 
and hit far better land speculations, but they had the com- 
mon fault of believing that things far away from home 
are necessarily and always the best. The demand rose 
for bigger, fatter newspapers, with comic sections and 
plenty of purple ink, and the Post's owners found them- 
selves unable to supply it. In fact they had to retort by 
mortgaging their property to the hilt and cutting expenses 
to rock-bottom. These were dark days for the Post. That 
it managed to survive them at all was due chiefly to the 
personality of Colonel Cowles, who, though doubtless 
laughable as a political economist, was yet considered to 
have his good points. But the Hercules-labor grew too 


46 QUEED 

heavy even for him, and the paper was headed straight for 
the auctioneer’s block when new interests suddenly stepped 
in and bought it. These interests, consisting largely of pro- 
gressive men of the younger generation, thoroughly over- 
hauled and reorganized the property, laid in the needed purple 
ink, and were now gradually driving the old paper back to 
the dividend-paying point again. 

Colonel Cowles, whose services had, of course, been re- 
tained, was of the old school of journalism, editor and 
manager, too. Very little went into the Post that he had 
not personally vis£d in the proof : forty galleys a night were 
child’s play to him. Managing editor there was none but 
himself ; the city editor was his mere office-boy and mouth- 
piece ; even the august business manager, who mingled with 
great advertisers on equal terms, was known to take orders 
from him. In addition the Colonel wrote three columns of 
editorials every day. Of these editorials it is enough to say 
at this point that there were people who liked them. 

Toward this dominant personality, the reluctant appli- 
cant for work now made his way. He cut an absent-minded 
figure upon the street, did Mr. Queed, but this time he made 
his crossings without mishap. Undisturbed by dogs, he 
landed at the Post building, and in time blundered into 
a room described as “Editorial” on the glass-door. A 
friendly young girl sitting there, pounding away on a type- 
writer, referred him to the next office, and the young man, 
opening the connecting door without knocking, passed in- 
side. 

A full-bodied, gray-headed, gray-mustached man sat 
in his shirt-sleeves behind a great table, writing with a very 
black pencil in a large sprawling hand. He glanced up as 
the door opened. 

“Colonel Cowles?” 

“I am the man, sir. How may I serve you?” 

Queed laid on the table the card West had given him with 
a pencilled line of introduction. 

“Oh — Mr. Queed! Certainly — certainly. Sit down. 


QUEED 47 

sir. I have been expecting you. — Let me get those papers 
out of your way.” 

Colonel Cowles had a heavy jaw and rather too rubicund 
a complexion. He looked as if apoplexy would get him 
some day. However, his head was like a lion’s of the tribe 
of Judah; his eye was kindly; his manner dignified, courte- 
ous, and charming. Queed had decided not to set the 
Colonel right in his views on taxation; it would mean only 
a useless discussion which would take time. To the older 
gentleman’s polite inquiries relative to his impressions of 
the city and so forth, he for the same reason gave the brief- 
est possible replies. But the Colonel, no apostle of the doc- 
trine that time is far more than money, went off into a long 
monologue, kindly designed to give the young stranger 
some idea of his new surroundings and atmosphere. 

“ . . . Look out there, sir. It is like that all day long — 
a double stream of people always pouring by. I have looked 
out of these windows for twenty-five years, and it was very 
different in the old days. I remember when the cows used 
to come tinkling down around that corner at milking- time. 
A twelve-story office building will rise there before another 
year. We have here the finest city and the finest State in 
the Union. You come to them, sir, at a time of exceptional 
interest. We are changing fast, leaping forward very fast. 
Ido not hold with those who take all change to be progress, 
but God grant that our feet are set in the right path. No 
section of the country is moving more rapidly, or, as I 
believe, with all our faults, to better ends than this. My 
own eyes have seen from these windows a broken town, 
stagnant in trade and population and rich only in memories, 
transform itself into the splendid thriving city you see 
before you. Our faces, too long turned backward, are set 
at last toward the future. From one end of the State to 
another the spirit of honorable progress is throbbing through 
our people. We have revolutionized and vastly improved 
our school system. We have wearied of mud-holes and are 
laying the foundations of a network of splendid roads. We 


48 QUEED 

are doing wonders for the public health. Our farmers are 
learning to practice the new agriculture — with plenty of 
lime, sir, plenty of lime. They grasp the fact that corn at a 
hundred bushels to the acre is no dream, but the most 
vital of realities. Our young men who a generation ago 
left us for the irrigated lands of your Northwest, are at last 
understanding that the finest farmlands in the country are 
at their doors for half the price. With all these changes 
has come a growing independence in political thought. 
The old catchwords and bogies have lost their power. We 
no longer think that whatever wears the Democratic tag 
is necessarily right. We no longer measure every Repub- 
lican by Henry G. Surface. We no longer ...” 

Queed, somewhat interested in spite of himself, and toler- 
ably familiar with history, interrupted to ask who Henry 
G. Surface might be. The question brought the Colonel 
up with a jolt. 

“Ah, well,” said he presently, with a wave of his hand, 
“you will hear that story soon enough.” He was silent a 
moment, and then added, sadly and somewhat sternly: 
“Young man, I have reserved one count in the total, the 
biggest and best, for the last. Keep your ear and eye open — 
and I mean the inner ear and eye as well as the outer — 
keep your mind open, above all keep your heart open, and 
it will be given you to understand that we have here the 
bravest, the sweetest, and the kindliest people in the world. 
The Lord has been good to you to send you among them. 
This is the word of a man in the late evening of life to one in 
the hopeful morning. You will take it, I hope, without 
offense. Are you a Democrat, sir?” 

“I am a political economist.” 

The Colonel smiled. “Well said, sir. Science knows no 
party lines. Your chosen subject rises above the valley of 
partisanry where we old wheel-horses plod — stinging each 
other in the dust, as the poet finely says. Mr. West has told 
me of your laurels.” 

He went on to outline the business side of what the Post 


QUEED 49 

had to offer. Queed found himself invited to write a certain 
number of editorial articles, not to exceed six a week, under 
the Colonel’s direction. He had his choice of working on 
space, at the rate of five dollars per column, payment de- 
pendent upon publication ; or of drawing a fixed honorarium 
of ten dollars per week, whether called on for the stipulated 
six articles or for no articles at all. Queed decided to accept 
the fixed honorarium, hoping that there would be many 
weeks when he would be called on for no articles at all. A 
provisional arrangement to run a month was agreed upon. 

“I have,” said the Colonel, “already sketched out some 
work for you to begin on. The legislature meets here in 
January. It is important to the State that our whole tax- 
system should be overhauled and reformed. The present 
system is a mere crazy-quilt, unsatisfactory in a thousand 
ways. I suggest that you begin with a careful study of the 
law, making yourself familiar with — ” 

“I am already familiar with it.” 

“Ah! And what do you think of it?” 

“It is grotesque.” 

“Good! I like a clean-cut expression of opinion such as 
that, sir. Now tell me your criticisms on the law as it 
stands, and what you suggest as remedies.” 

Queed did so briefly, expertly. The Colonel was consider- 
ably impressed by his swift, searching summaries. 

“We may go right ahead,” said he. “I wish you would 
block out a series of articles — eight, ten, or twelve, as you 
think best — designed to prepare the public mind for a 
thorough-going reform and point the way that the reform 
should take. Bring this schedule to me to-morrow, if you 
will be so good, and we will go over it together.” 

Queed, privately amused at the thought of Colonel 
Cowles’s revising his views on taxation, rose to go. 

“By the bye,” said the Colonel, unluckily struck by a 
thought, “ I myself wrote a preliminary article on tax re- 
form a week or so ago, meaning to follow it up with others 
later on. Perhaps you had best read that before — ” 


50 QUEED 

“I have already read it.” 

“Ah! How did it strike you?” 

“You ask me that?” 

“Certainly,” said Colonel Cowles, a little surprised. 

“Well, since you ask me, I will say that I thought it 
rather amusing.” 

The Colonel looked nettled. He was by nature a choleric 
man, but in his age he had learned the futility of disputa- 
tion and affray, and nowadays kept a tight rein upon him- 
self. 

“You are frank sir — ’tis a commendable quality. 
Doubtless your work will put my own poor efforts to the 
blush.” 

“I shall leave you to judge of that, Colonel Cowles.” 

The Colonel, abandoning his hospitable plan of inviting 
his new assistant to sup with him at the club, bowed with 
dignity, and Queed eagerly left him. Glancing at his watch 
in the elevator, the young man figured that the interview, 
including going and coming, would stand him in an hour’s 
time, which was ten minutes more than he had allowed for it. 


V 

Selections from Contemporary Opinions of Mr. Queed; also 
concerning Henry G. Surface , his Life and Deeds; of Fiji , 
the Landlady's Daughter , and how she happened to look up 
Altruism in the Dictionary . 

A MONTH later, one icy afternoon, Charles Gardiner 
West ran into Colonel Cowles at the club, where the 
Colonel, a lone widower, repaired each day at six 
p. M., there to talk over the state of the Union till nine- 
thirty. 

“ Colonel,” said West, dropping into a chair, “ man to man, 
what is your opinion of Doctor Queed ’s editorials?” 

“They are unanswerable,” said the Colonel, and con- 
sulted his favorite ante-prandial refreshment. 

West laughed. “Yes, but from the standpoint of the 
general public, Constant Reader, Pro Bono Publico, and all 
that?” 

“No subscriber will ever be angered by them.” 

“Would you say that they helped the editorial page or 
not?” 

“They lend to it an academic elegance, a scientific stateli- 
ness, a certain grand and austere majesty — ” 

“Colonel, I, asked you for your opinion of those articles.” 
“ Damn it, sir,” roared the Colonel, “I’ve never read one.” 
Later West repeated the gist of this conversation to Miss 
Weyland, who ornamented with him a tiny dinner given 
that evening at the home of their very good friends, Mr. and 
Mrs. Stewart Byrd. 

It was a beautiful little dinner, as befitted the hospitable 
distinction of the givers. The Stewart Byrds were hosts 
among a thousand. In him, as it further happens, West (him- 
self the beau ideal of so many) had from long ago recognized 


52 QUEED 

his own paragon and pattern; a worthy one, indeed, this tall 
young man whose fine abilities and finer faiths were already 
writing his name so large upon the history of his city. About 
the dim-lit round of his table there were gathered but six this 
evening, including the host and hostess ; the others, besides 
Sharlee Weyland and West, being Beverley Byrd and Miss 
Avery: the youngest of the four Byrd brothers, and heir 
with them to one of the largest fortunes in the State; 
and the only daughter of old Avery, who came to us from 
Mauch Chunk, Pa., his money preceding him in a special 
train of box cars, especially invented for the transportation 
of Pennsylvania millions to places where the first families 
congregate. 

4 ‘And I had to confess that I’d never read one either. 
I did begin one,” said West — “ it was called ‘Elementary 
Principles of Incidence and Distribution,’ I remember — 
but the hour was eleven-thirty and I fell asleep.” 

“I know exactly how you felt about it,” said Sharlee, 
“for I have read them all — moil ” 

He looked at her with boundless admiration. “His one 
reader!” 

“There are two of us, if you please. I think of getting up 
a club — Associated Sons and Daughters of Mr. Queed’s 
Faithful Followers; President, Me. I’ll make the other 
member Secretary, for he is experienced in that work. He ’s 
at present Secretary of the Tax Reform League in New York. 
Did Colonel Cowles show you the wonderful letter that 
came from him, asking the name of the man who was 
writing the Post's masterly tax articles, et cetera, et cetera? ” 

“No — really! But tell me, how have you, as President, 
enjoyed them?” 

“I haven’t understood a single word in any of them. 
Where on earth did he dig up his fearful vocabulary? Yet 
it is the plain duty of both of us to read these articles: you 
as one of his employers, I as the shrewd landlady’s agent 
who keeps a watchful eye upon the earning power of her 
boarders.” 


QUEED 53 

West mused. “He has a wonderful genius for crushing 
all the interest out of any subject he touches, has n’t he? 
Yet manifestly the first duty of an editorial is to get itself 
read. How old do you think he is?” 

“Oh — anywhere from twenty-five to — forty-seven.” 

“He’ll be twenty-four this month. I see him sometimes 
at the office, you know, where he still treats me like an in- 
trusive subscription agent. In some ways, he is undoubt- 
edly the oldest man in the world. In another way he has n’t 
any age at all. Spiritually he is unborn — he simply does n’t 
exist at all. I diagnose his complaint as ingrowing egoism 
of a singularly virulent variety.” 

It was beyond Sharlee’s power to controvert this diagno- 
sis. Mr. Queed had in fact impressed her as the most 
frankly and grossly self-centred person she had ever seen 
in her life. But unlike West, her uppermost feeling in regard 
to him was a strong sense of pity. She knew things about 
his life that West did not know and probably never would. 
For though the little Doctor of Mrs. Paynter’s had prob- 
ably not intended to give her a confidence, and certainly 
had no right to do so, she had thus regarded what he said 
to her in the dining-room that night, and of his pathetic 
situation in regard to a father she never meant to say a word 
to anybody. 

“I sized him up for a remarkable man,” said she, “when 
I saw the wonderful way he sat upon his hat that afternoon. 
Don’t you remember? He struck me then as the most 
natural, unconscious, and direct human being I ever saw — 
don’t you think that? — and now think of his powers of 
concentration. All his waking time, except what he gives 
to the Post , goes to that awful book of his. He is ridiculous 
now because his theory of life is ridiculous. But suppose 
it popped into his head some day to switch all that direct- 
ness and concentrated energy in some other direction. Don’t 
you think he might be rather a formidable young person?” 

West conceded that there might be something in that. 
And happening to glance across the flower-sweet table at 


54 QUEED 

the moment, he was adroitly detached and re-attached by 
the superbly “ finished’ ' Miss Avery. 

The little dinner progressed. Nor was this the only spot 
in town where evening meals were going forward amid 
stimulating talk. Far away over the town, at the same hour, 
the paying guests of Mrs. Paynter’s were gathered about 
her hospitable board, plying the twin arts of supping and 
talking. And as Sharlee’s fellow-diners talked of Mr. Queed, 
it chanced that Mr. Queed’s fellow-suppers were talking of 
Sharlee, or at any rate of her family’s famous misfortune. 
Mr. Queed, it is true, did not appreciate this fact, for the 
name of the female agent who had taken his Twenty from 
him could not have been more unknown to him if she had 
been a dweller in Phrygia or far Cappadocia. 

Major Brooke told, not by request, one of his well-known 
stories about how he had flouted and routed the Repub- 
licans in 1875. The plot of these stories was always the same, 
but the setting shifted about here and there, and this one 
had to do with a county election in which, the Major said, 
the Republicans and negroes had gone the limit trying to 
swindle the Democrats out of the esteemed offices. 

“And I said, ‘You’ — the ladies will excuse me, I ’m sure 
— ‘You lying rascal,’ s’ I, ‘don’t you dare to contradict me! 
You’re all tarred with the same pitch,’ s’ I. ‘Everything 
you touch turns corrupt and rotten. Look at Henry G. 
Surface,’ s’ I. ‘ The finest fellow God ever made, till the 
palsied hand of Republicanism fell upon him, and now can- 
kering and rotting in jail — ’ ” 

“But Henry G. Surface was n’t rotting in jail in 1875,” 
said William Klinker, and boldly winked at the little 
Doctor. 

The Major, disconcerted for an instant by his anachron- 
ism, recovered superbly. “My vision, sir, was prophetic. 
The stain was upon him. The cloven foot had already been 
betrayed. ...” 

“And who was Henry G. Surface?” inquired Mr. Queed. 

“What! You haven’t heard that infamous story!” 


QUEED 55 

cried the Major, with the surprised delight of the invet- 
erate raconteur who has unexpectedly stumbled upon an 
audience. 

A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was stand- 
ing, bowing in his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter. 

“Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through 
Major Brooke’s tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so 
good as to excuse me.” 

And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn 
goatee stabbing the atmosphere before him, in rather a 
heavy silence. 

“Pish!” snapped the Major, when the door had safely 
shut. And tapping his forehead significantly, he gave his 
head a few solemn wags and launched upon the worn 
biography of Henry G. Surface. 

Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the 
boarders listened with a perennial interest while Major 
Brooke expounded the familiar details. His wealth of 
picturesque language we may safely omit, and briefly re- 
mind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. 
Surface found himself, during the decade following Appo- 
mattox, with his little world at his feet. He was thirty at 
the time, handsome, gifted, high-spirited, a brilliant young 
man who already stood high in the councils of the State. 
But he was also restless in disposition, arrogant, over- 
weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief — “a yellow 
streak in him, and we did n’t know it!” bellowed the Major. 
Bitterly chagrined by his failure .to secure, from a legisla- 
ture of the early seventies, the United States Senatorship 
which he had confidently expected, young Surface, in a 
burst of anger and resentment, committed the unforgivable 
sin. He went over bag and baggage to the other side^to the 
“nigger party ” whom all his family, friends, and relations, all 
his “class,” everybody else with his instincts and traditions, 
were desperately struggling, by hook and by crook, to crush. 

In our mild modern preferences as between presidents, 
or this governor and that, we catch no reminiscence of the 


56 QUEED 

fierce antagonisms of the elections of reconstruction days. 
The idolized young tribune of the people became a Judas 
Iscariot overnight, with no silver pieces as the price of his 
apostasy. If he expected immediate preferment from the 
other camp, he was again bitterly disappointed. Life mean- 
time had become unbearable to him. He was ostracized 
more studiously than any leper; it is said that his own 
father cut him when they passed each other in the street. 
His young wife died, heartbroken, it was believed, by the 
flood of hatred and vilification that poured in upon her 
husband. One man alone stood by Surface in his down- 
fall, his classmate and friend of his bosom from the cradle, 
John Randolph Weyland, a good man and a true. Wey- 
land’s affection never faltered. When Surface withdrew 
from the State with a heart full of savage rancor, Weyland 
went every year or two to visit him, first in Chicago and 
later in New York, where the exile was not slow in winning 
name and fortune as a daring speculator. And when Wey- 
land died, leaving a widow and infant daughter, he gave a 
final proof of his trust by making Surface sole trustee of his 
estate, which was a large one for that time and place. Few 
have forgotten how the political traitor rewarded this 
misplaced confidence. The crash came within a few 
months. Surface was arrested in the company of a woman 
whom he referred to as his wife. The trust fund, saving a 
fraction, was gone, swallowed up to stay some ricketty 
deal. Surface was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced 
to ten years at hard labor, and every Democrat in the State 
cried, “I told you so.” What had become of him after his 
release from prison, nobody knew; some of the boarders 
said that he was living in the west, or in Australia ; others, 
that he was not living anywhere, unless on the shores of 
perpetual torment. All agreed that the alleged second Mrs. 
Surface had long since died — all, that is, but Klinker, who 
said that she had only pretended to die in order to make a 
fade-away with the gate receipts. For many persons be- 
lieved, it seemed, that Surface, by clever juggling of his 


QUEED 57 

books, had managed to “hold out” a large sum of money 
in the enforced settlement of his affairs. At any rate, very 
little of it ever came back to the family of the man who had 
put trust in him, and that was why the daughter, whose 
name was Charlotte Lee Weyland, now worked for her 
daily bread. 

That Major Brooke’s hearers found this story of ever- 
green interest was natural enough. For besides the brilliant 
blackness of the narrative, there was the close personal 
connection that all Paynterites had with some of its chief 
personages. Did not the sister-in-law of John Randolph 
Weyland sit and preside over them daily, pouring their 
coffee morning and night with her own hands? And did 
not the very girl whose fortune had been stolen, the bereft 
herself, come now and then to sit among them, occupying 
that identical chair which Mr. Bylash could touch by merely 
putting out his hand? Henry G. Surface’s story? Why, 
Mrs. Paynter’s wrote it! 

These personal bearings were of course lost upon Mr. 
Queed, the name Weyland being utterly without significance 
to him. He left the table the moment he had absorbed all 
the supper he wanted. In the hall he ran upon Professor 
Nicolovius, the impressive-looking master of Greek at 
Milner’s Collegiate School, who, already hatted and over- 
coated, was drawing on his gloves under the depressed 
fancy chandelier. The old professor glanced up at the 
sound of footsteps and favored Queed with a bland smile. 

“I can’t resist taking our doughty swashbuckler down a 
peg or two every now and then,” said he. “Did you ever 
know such an interminable ass?” 

“Really, I never thought about it,” said the young man, 
raising his eye-brows in surprise and annoyance at being 
addressed. 

“Then' take my word for it. You’ll not find his match in 
America. You show your wisdom, at any rate, in giving as 
little of your valuable time as possible to our charming 
supper-table.” 


58 QUEED 

“That hardly argues any Solomonic wisdom, I fancy.” 

“You’re in the hands of the Philistines here, Mr. Queed,” 
said Nicolovius, snapping his final button. “May I say that 
I have read some of your editorials in the Post with — ah — 
pleasure and profit? I should feel flattered if you would come 
to see me in my room some evening, where I can offer you, 
at any rate, a fire and a so-so cigar.” 

“Thank you. However, I do not smoke,” said Doctor 
Queed, and, bowing coldly to the old professor, started rap- 
idly up the stairs. 

Aloft the young man went to his scriptorium, happy in 
the thought that five hours of incorruptible leisure and 
unswerving devotion to his heart’s dearest lay before him. 
It had been a day when the Post did not require him; hour 
by hour since breakfast he had fared gloriously upon his 
book. But to-night his little room was cold; unendurably 
cold; not even the flamings of genius could overcome its 
frigor ; and hardly half an hour had passed before he became 
aware that his sanctum was altogether uninhabitable. 
Bitterly he faced the knowledge that he must fare forth into 
the outer world of the dining-room that night ; irritably he 
gathered up his books and papers. 

Half-way down the first flight a thought struck Queed, 
and he retraced his steps. The last time that he had been 
compelled to the dining-room the landlady’s daughter had 
been there — (it was all an accident, poor child ! Had n’t 
she vowed to herself never to intrude on the little Doctor 
again?) — and/stupidly^breaking the point of her pencil, had 
had the hardihood to ask him for the loan of his knife. Mr. 
Queed was determined that this sort of thing should not 
occur again. A method for enforcing his determination, at 
once firm and courteous, had occurred to him. One could 
never tell when trespassers would stray into the dining-room 
— his dining-room by right of his exalted claim. Rummag- 
ing in his bottom bureau drawer, he produced a placard, 
like a narrow little sign-board, and tucking it under his arm, 
went on downstairs. 


OUEED 59 

The precaution was by no means superfluous. Disgust- 
ingly enough the landlady’s daughter was once more in his 
dining-room before him, the paraphernalia of her algebra 
spread over half the Turkey-red cloth. Fifi looked up, 
plainly terrified at his entrance and his forbidding expres- 
sion. It was her second dreadful blunder, poor luckless 
little wight! She had faithfully waited a whole half-hour, 
and Mr. Queed had shown no signs of coming down. Never 
had he waited so long as this when he meant to claim the 
dining-room. Mrs. Paynter’s room, nominally heated by a 
flume from the Latrobe heater in the parlor, was noticeably 
coolish on a wintry night. Besides, there was no table in it, 
and everybody knows that algebra is hard enough under 
the most favorable conditions, let alone having to do it on 
your knee. It seemed absolutely safe ; Fifi had yielded to the 
summons of the familiar comforts ; and now — 

“Oh — how do you do?” she was saying in a frightened 
voice. 

Mr. Queed bowed, indignantly. Silently he marched to 
his chair, the one just opposite, and sat down in offended 
majesty. To Fifi it seemed that to get up at once and leave 
the room, which she would gladly have done, would be too 
crude a thing to do, too gross a rebuke to the little Doctor’s 
Ego. She was wrong, of course, though her sensibilities were 
indubitably right. Therefore she feigned enormous engross- 
ment in her algebra, and struggled to make herself as small 
and inoffensive as she could. 

The landlady’s daughter wore a Peter Thompson suit of 
blue serge, which revealed a few inches of very thin white 
neck. She was sixteen and reddish-haired, and it was her 
last year at the High School. The reference is to Fifi’s com- 
pletion of the regular curriculum, and not to any impend- 
ing promotion to a still Higher School. She was a fond, 
uncomplaining little thing, who had never hurt anybody’s 
feelings in her life, and her eyes, which were light blue, had 
just that look of ethereal sweetness you see in Burne- 
Jones’s women and for just that same reason. Her syrup 


<5q QUEED 

she took with commendable faithfulness; the doctor, an 
rare visits, spoke cheerily of the time when she was to be 
quite strong and well again; but there were moments when 
SharleeWeyland, looking at her little cousin’s face in repose, 
felt her heart stop still. 

Fifi dallied with her algebra, hoping and praying that she 
would not have to cough. She had been very happy all- that 
day. There was no particular reason for it; so it was the 
nicest kind of happiness, the kind that comes from inside, 
which even the presence of the little Doctor could not take 
away from her. Heaven knew that Fifi harbored no grudge 
against Mr. Queed, and she had not forgotten what Sharlee 
said about being gentle with him. But how to be gentle 
with so austere a young Socrates? Raising her head upon 
the pretext of turning a page, Fifi stole a hurried glance at 
him. 

The first thing Mr. Queed had done on sitting down was to 
produce his placard, silently congratulating himself on 
having brought it. Selecting tfye book which he would be 
least likely to need, he shoved it well forward /nearly half- 
way across the table, and against the volume propped up 
his little pasteboard sign, the printed part staring straight 
toward Fifi. The sign was an old one which he had chanced 
to pick up years ago at the Astor Library. It read: 

SILENCE 

Arch-type and model of courteous warning! 

When Fifi read the little Doctor’s sign, her feelings were 
not in the least wounded, insufficiently subtle though some 
particular people might have thought its admonition to be. 
On the contrary, it was only by the promptest work in get- 
ting her handkerchief into her mouth that she avoided 
laughing out loud. The two of them alone in the room and 
his Silence sign gazing at her like a pasteboard Gorgon ! 

Fifi became more than ever interested in Mr. Queed. An 
intense and strictly feminine curiosity filled her soul to 
know something of the nature of that work which demanded 


QUEED 61 

so stern a noiselessness. Observing rigorously the printed 
Rule of the Dining-Room, she could not forbear to pilfer 
glance after glance at the promulgator of it. Mr. Queed was 
writing, not reading, to-night. He wrote very slowly on 
half-size yellow pads, worth seventy-five cents a dozen, 
using the books only for reference. Now he tore off a sheet 
only partly filled with his small handwriting, and at the 
head of a new sheet inscribed a Roman numeral, with a 
single word under that. Like her cousin Sharlee at an earlier 
date, Fifi experienced a desire to study out, upside down, 
what this heading was. Several peeks were needed, with 
artful attention to algebra between whiles, before she was 
at last convinced that she had it. Undoubtedly it was 

XVIII 

ALTRUISM 

There was nothing enormous about Fifi’s vocabulary, 
but she well knew what to do in a case like this. Behind her 
stood a battered little walnut bookcase, containing the 
Paynter library. After a safe interval of absorption in her 
sums, she pushed back her chair with the most respectful 
quietude and pulled out a tall volume. The pages of it she 
turned with blank studious face but considerable inner 
expectancy : Af — Ai — A1 — Alf . . . . 

A giggle shattered the academic calm, and Fifi, in horror, 
realized that she was the author of it. She looked up 
quickly, and her worst fears were realized. Mr. Queed was 
staring at her, as one scarcely able to credit his own senses, 
icy rebuke piercing through and overflowing his great round 
spectacles. 

“ I beg your pardon! — Mr. Queed. It — it slipped out, 
really — ” 

But the young man thought that the time had come when 
this question of noise in his dining-room must be settled 
once and for all. 

“Indeed? Be kind enough to explain the occasion of it.” 


62 QUEED 

“Why,” said Fifi, too truthful to prevaricate and com- 
pletely cowed, “it — it was only the meaning of a word 
here. It — was silly of me. I — I can’t explain it — ex- 
actly — ” 

“Suppose you try. Since your merriment interrupts my 
work, I claim the privilege of sharing it.” 

“ Well ! I — I — happened to see that word at the head of 
the page you are writing — ” 

“Proceed.” 

“I — I looked it up in the dictionary. It says ” she read 
out with a gulp and a cough, “it means ‘self-sacrificing 
devotion to the interests of others.’ ” 

The poor child thought her point must now be indelicately 
plain, but the lips of Doctor Queed merely emitted another 
close-clipped : ‘ ‘ Proceed . ’ ’ 

At a desperate loss as she was, Fifi was suddenly visited 
by an idea. “Oh! I see. You’re — you’re writing against 
altruism, are n’t you?” 

“What leads you to that conclusion, if I may ask?” 

“Why — I — I suppose it’s the — way you — you do. 
Of course I ought n’t to have said it — ” 

“Go on. What way that I do?” 

Poor Fifi saw that she was floundering in ever more 
deeply. With the boldness of despair she blurted out: “Well 
— one thing — you sent me out of the room that night — 
when I coughed, you know. I — I don’t understand about 
altruism like you do, but I — should think it was — my 
interests to stay here — ” 

There followed a brief silence, which made Fifi more mis* 
erable than any open rebuke, and then Mr. Queed said in a 
dry tone: “I am engaged upon a work of great importance 
to the public, I may say to posterity. Perhaps you can 
appreciate that such a work is entitled to the most favor- 
able conditions in which to pursue it.” 

“Of course. Indeed I understand perfectly, Mr. Queed,” 
said Fifi, immediately touched by what seemed like kind- 
ness from him. And she added innocently : “ All men — 


QUEED 63, 

writing men, I mean — feel that way about their work — 
I suppose. I remember Mr. Sutro who used to have the 
very same room you’re in now. He was writing a five-act 
play, all in poetry, to show the horrors of war, and he used 
to say — ” 

The young man involuntarily shuddered. “I have 
nothing to do with other men. I am thinking,” he said with 
rather an unfortunate choice of words, “ only of myself.” 

“Oh — I see! Now I understand exactly!” 

“What is it that you see and understand so exactly?” 

“Why, the way you feel about altruism. You believe in 
it for other people, but not for yourself! Is n’t that right?” 

They stared across the table at each other: innocent Fifi, 
who barely knew the meaning of altruism, but had practiced 
it from the time she could practice anything, and the little 
Doctor, who knew everything about altruism that social 
science would ever formulate, and had stopped right there. 
All at once, his look altered; from objective it became sub- 
jective. The question seemed suddenly to hook onto some- 
thing inside, like a still street-car gripping hold of a cable 
and beginning to move; the mind’s eye of the young man 
appeared to be seized and swept inward. Presently without 
a word he resumed his writing. 

Fifi was much disturbed at the effect of her artless ques- 
tion, and just when everything was beginning to go so 
nicely too. In about half an hour, when she got up to retire, 
she said timidly: — 

“I’m sorry if I — I was rude just now, Mr. Queed. In- 
deed, I did n’t mean to be. . . .” 

“ I did not say that you were rude,” he answered without 
looking up. 

But at the door Fifi was arrested by his voice. 

“Why do you think it to your advantage to work in here? ” 

“It’s — it’s a good deal warmer, you know,” said Fifi, 
flustered, “and — then of course there’s the table and 
lamp. But it’s tjuite all right upstairs — really!” 

He made no answer. 


VI 

Autobiographical Data imparted, for Sound Business Reasons , 
to a Landlady's Agent; of the Agent's Other Title, etc. 

W HILE all move in slots in this world, Mr. Queed’s 
slot was infinitely more clearly marked than any 
of his neighbors’. It ran exclusively between the 
heaven of his room and the hades of the Post office; mani- 
festing itself at the latter place in certain staid writings done 
in exchange for ten dollars, currency of the realm, paid down 
each and every'Saturday. Into this slot he had been lifted, 
as it were by the ears, by a slip of a girl of the name of 
Charlotte Lee Weyland, though it was some time before 
he ever thought of it in that way. 

In the freemasonry of the boarding-house, the young man 
was early accepted as he was. He was promptly voted the 
driest, most uninteresting and self-absorbed savant ever 
seen. Even Miss Miller, ordinarily indefatigable where 
gentlemen were concerned, soon gave him up. To Mr. 
Bylash she spoke contemptuously of him, but secretly 
she was awed by his stately manner of speech and his 
godlike indifference to all pleasures, including those of 
female society. Of them all, Nicolovius was the only one 
who seemed in the least impressed by Mr. Queed’s appoint- 
ment as editorial writer on the Post. With the others the 
exalted world he moved in was so remote from theirs that 
no surprises were possible there, and if informed that the 
little Doctor had been elected president of Harvard Uni- 
versity, it would have seemed all in the day’s work to 
William Klinker. Klinker was six feet high, red-faced and 
friendly, and Queed preferred his conversation above any 
heard at Mrs. Paynter’s table. It reminded him very much 
of his friend the yeggman in New York. 


OUEED 65 

What went on behind the door of the tiny Scriptorium 
the boarders could only guess. It may be said that its 
owner’s big grievance against the world was that he had to 
leave it occasionally to earn his bread and meat. Apart from 
this he never left it in those days except for one reason, 
viz., the consumption three times a day of the said bread 
and meat. Probably this was one explanation of the marked 
pallor of his cheek, but of such details as this he never took 
the smallest notice. 

Under the tiny bed were three boxes of books, chief fruit 
of the savings of an inexpensive lifetime. But the books 
were now merely the occasional stimulus of a mind already 
well stored with their strength, well fortified against their 
weaknesses. Nowadays nearly all of Queed’stime, which he 
administered by an iron-clad Schedule of Hours, duly drawn 
up, went to the actual writing of his Magnum Opus. He 
had practically decided that it should be called “ The Science 
of Sciences.” For his book was designed to coordinate and 
unify the theories of all science into the single theory which 
alone gave any of them a living value, namely, the progress- 
ive evolution of a higher organized society and a higher in- 
dividual type. That this work would blaze a wholly new trail 
for a world of men, he rarely entertained a doubt. To its 
composition he gave fifteen actual hours a day on Post days, 
sixteen hours on non -Post days. Many men speak of work- 
ing hours like these, or even longer ones, but investigation 
would generally show that all kinds of restful interludes are 
indiscriminately counted in. Queed’s hours, you understand, 
were not elapsed time — they were absolutely net. He was 
one of the few men in the world who literally “did n’t have 
time.” 

He sat in Colonel Cowles’s office, scribbling rapidly, with 
his eye on his watch, writing one of those unanswerable 
articles which were so much dead space to a people’s news- 
paper. It was a late afternoon in early February, soon after 
the opening of the legislature ; and he was alone in the office. 
A knock fell upon the door, and at his “Come,” a girl 


66 QUEED 

entered who looked as pretty as a dewy May morning. 
Queed looked up at her with no welcome in his eye, or 
greeting on his lip, or spring in the pregnant hinges of his 
knee. Yet if he had been a less self-absorbed young scien- 
tist, it must certainly have dawned on him that he had 
seen this lady before. 

“Oh! How do you do!” said Sharlee, for it was indeed 
no other. 

“Oh — quite well.” 

“ Miss Leech tells me that Colonel Cowles has gone out. I 
particularly wished to see him. Perhaps you know when he 
will be back?” 

“Perhaps in half an hour. Perhaps in an hour. I cannot 
say.” 

She mused disappointedly. “ I could hardly wait. Would 
you be good enough to give him a message for me?” 

“Very well.” 

“Well — just tell him, please, that if he can make it 
convenient, we’d like the article about the reformatory to 
go in to-morrow, or the next day, anyway. He’ll under- 
stand perfectly; I have talked it all over with him. The 
only point was as to when the article would have the most 
effect, and we think the time has come now.” 

“You would like an article written about a reformatory 
for to-morrow’s Post or next day’s. Very well.” 

“Thank you so much for telling him. Good-afternoon.” 

“ You would like,” the young man repeated — “but one 
moment, if you please. You have omitted to inform me who 
you are.” 

To his surprise the lady turned round with a gay laugh. 
Sharlee had supposed that Mr. Queed, having been offended 
by her, was deliberately cutting her. That her identity 
had literally dropped cleanly from his mind struck her as 
both much better and decidedly more amusing. 

“Don’t you remember me?” she reminded him once 
again, laughing full at him from the threshhold. “My dog 
knocked you over in the street one day — surely you 


QUEED 67 

remember the pleasure-dog? — and then that night I gave 
you your supper at Mrs. Paynter’s and afterwards col- 
lected twenty dollars from you for back board. I am Mrs. 
Paynter’s niece and my name is Charlotte Weyland.” 

Weyland? . . . Weyland? Oho! So this was the girl — 
sure enough — that Henry G. Surface had stripped of her 
fortune. Well, well! 

“Ah, yes, I recall you now.” 

She thought there was an inimical note in his voice, and 
to pay him for it, she said with a final smiling nod: “Oh # 
I am so pleased!” 

Her little sarcasm passed miles over his head. She had 
touched the spring of the automatic card-index system 
known as his memory and the ingenious machinery worked 
on. Presently it pushed out and laid before him the com- 
plete record, neatly ticketed and arranged, the full dossier, 
of all that had passed between him and the girl. But she 
was nearly through the door before he had decided to say: 

“I had another letter from my father last night.” 

“Oh!” she said, turning at once — 11 Did you!” 

He nodded, gloomily. “However, there was not a cent of 
money in it.” 

If he had racked his brains for a subject calculated^) 
detain her — which we may rely upon it that he did not 
do — he could not have hit upon a surer one. Sharlee Wey- 
land had a great fund of pity for this young man’s worse 
than fatherlessness, and did not in the least mind showing 
it. She came straight back into the room and up to the table 
where he sat. 

“Does it help you at all — about knowing where he is, I 
mean?” 

“Not in the least. I wonder what he’s up to anyway?” 

He squinted up at her interrogatively through his cir- 
cular glasses, as though she ought to be able to tell him if 
anybody could. Then a thought very much like that took 
definite shape in his mind. He himself had no time to give 
to mysterious problems and will-o’-the-wisp pursuits; his 


68 QUEED 

book and posterity claimed it all. This girl was familiar 
with the city; doubtless knew all the people; she seemed 
intelligent and capable, as girls went. He remembered that 
he had consulted her about securing remunerative work, 
with some results; possibly she would also have something 
sensible to say about his paternal problem. He might make 
an even shrewder stroke. As his landlady’s agent, this girl 
would of course be interested in establishing his connection 
with a relative who had twenty-dollar bills to give away. 
Therefore if it ever should come to a search, why might n’t 
he turn the whole thing over to the agent — persuade her 
to hunt his father for him, and thus leave his own time free 
for the service of the race? 

“Look here,” said he, with a glance at his watch. “I’ll 
take a few minutes. Kindly sit down there and I’ll show 
you how the man is behaving.” 

Sharlee sat down as she was bidden, close by his side, 
piqued as to her curiosity, as well as flattered by his royal 
condescension. She wore her business suit, which was rough 
and blue, with a smart little pony coat. She also wore a 
white veil festooned around her hat, and white gloves that 
were quite unspotted from the world. The raw February 
winds had whipped roses into her cheeks; her pure ultra- 
marine eyes made the blue of her suit look commonplace 
and dull. Dusk had fallen over the city, and Queed cleverly 
bethought him to snap on an electric light. It revealed a 
very shabby, ramshackle, and dingy office; but the long 
table in it was new, oaken, and handsome. In fact, it was 
one of the repairs introduced by the new management. 

“Here,” said he, “is his first letter — the one that 
brought me from New York.” 

He took it from its envelope and laid it open on the table. 
A sense of the pathos in this ready sharing of one’s most 
intimate secrets with a stranger took hold of Sharlee as she 
leaned forward to see what it might say. 

“Be careful! Your feather thing is sticking my eye.” 

Meekly the girl withdrew to a safer distance. From there 


QUEED 69 

she read with amazement the six typewritten lines which 
was all that the letter proved to be* They read thus : 

Your father asks that, if you have any of the natural feelings of a son, 
you will at once leave New York and take up your residence in this city. 
This is the first request he has ever made of you, as it will be, if you refuse 
it, the last. But he earnestly begs that you will comply with it, antici- 
pating that it will be to your decided advantage to do so. 

“The envelope that that came in,” said Queed, briskly 
laying it down. “Now here ’s the envelope that the twenty 
dollars came in — - it is exactly like the other two, you ob- 
serve. — The last exhibit is somewhat remarkable; it came 
yesterday. Read that.” 

Sharlee required no urging. She read : 


Make friends; mingle with people, and learn to like them. This is the 
earnest injunction of 

Your father. 


“Note especially,” said the young man, “the initial 
Q on each of the three envelopes. You will observe that 
the tail in every instance is defective in just the same 
way.” 

Sure enough, the tail of every Q was broken off short 
near the root, like the rudimentary tail anatomists find in 
Genus Homo. Mr. Queed looked at her with scholarly 
triumph. 

“I suppose that removes all doubt,” said she,” that all 
these came from the same person.” 

“Unquestionably. — Well?__What do they suggest to 
you?” 

A circle of light from the green-shaded desk-lamp beat 
down on the three singular exhibits. Sharlee studied them 
with bewilderment mixed with profound melancholy. 

“Is it conceivable,” said she, hesitatingly — -“I only 
suggest this because the whole thing seems so extraordin- 
ary — that somebody is playing a very foolish joke on 
you?” 


70 QUEED 

He stared. “Who on earth would wish to joke with 
me?” 

Of course he had her there. “ I wish,” she said, “that you 
would tell me what you yourself think of them.” 

“I think that my father must be very hard up for some- 
thing to do.” 

“Oh — I don’t think I should speak of it in that way if 
I were you.” 

“Why not? If he cites filial duty to me, why shall I not 
cite paternal duty to him? Why should he confine his entire 
relations with me in twenty-four years to two preposterous 
detective-story letters?” 

Sharlee said nothing. To tell the truth, she thought the 
behavior of Queed Senior puzzling in the last degree. 

“You grasp the situation? He knows exactly where I am; 
evidently he has known it all along. He could come to see 
me to-night; he could have come as soon as I arrived here 
three months ago; he could have come five, ten, twenty 
years ago, when I was in New York. But instead he elects 
to write these curious letters, apparently seeking to make a 
mystery, and throwing the burden of finding him on me. 
Why should I become excited over the prospect? If he 
would promise to endow me now, to support or pension me 
off, if I found him, that would be one thing. But I submit 
to you that no man can be expected to interrupt a most 
important life-work in consideration of a single twenty- 
dollar bill. And that is the only proof of interest I ever had 
from him. No — ” he broke off suddenly — “no, that’s 
hardly true after all. I suppose it was he who sent the money 
to Tim.” 

“To Tim?” 

“Tim Queed.” 

Presently she gently prodded him. “And do you want 
to tell me who Tim Queed is?” 

He eyed her thoughtfully. If the ground of his talk 
appeared somewhat delicate, nothing could have been more 
matter-of-fact than the way he tramped it. Yet now he 


QUEED 7I 

palpably paused to ask himself whether it was worth his 
while to go more into detail. Yes; clearly it was. If it 
ever became necessary to ask the boarding-house agent to 
find his father for him, she would have to know what the 
situation was, and now was the time to make it plain to her 
once and for all. 

“ He is the man I lived with till I was fourteen; one of my 
friends, a policeman. For a long time I supposed, of course, 
that Tim was my father, but when I was ten or twelve, he 
told me, first that I was an orphan who had been left with 
him to bring up, and later on, that I had a father somewhere 
who was not in a position to bring up children. That was all 
he would ever say about it. I became a student while still 
a little boy, having educated myself practically without 
instruction of any sort, and when I was fourteen I left Tim 
because he married at that time, and, with the quarrel- 
ing and drinking that followed, the house became unbear- 
able. Tim then told me for the first time that he^had, 
from some source, funds equivalent to twenty-five dol- 
lars a month for my board, and that he would allow me 
fifteen of that, keeping ten dollars a month for his services 
as agent. You follow all this perfectly? So matters went 
along for ten years, Tim bringing me the fifteen dollars 
every month and coming frequently to see me in between, 
often bringing along his brother Murphy, who is a yegg- 
man. Last fall came this letter, purporting to be from my 
father. Absurd as it appeared to me, I decided to come. 
Tim said that, in that case, he would be compelled to cut 
off the allowance entirely. Nevertheless, I came.” 

Sharlee had listened to this autobiographical sketch 
with close and sympathetic attention. “And now that you 
are here — and settled — have n’t you decided to do some- 
thing — ?” 

He leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at her. 
“Do something! Have n’t I done all that he asked? Have 
n’t I given up fifteen dollars a month for him? Decidedly, 
the next move is his.” 


72 OUEED 

“But if you meant to take no steps when you got here, 
why did you come?” 

“To give him his chance, of course. One city is exactly 
like another to me. All that I ask of any of them is a table 
and silence. Apart from the forfeiture of my income, living 
here and living there are all one. Do! You talk of it glibly 
enough, but what is there to do? There are no Queeds in 
this city. I looked in the directory this morning. In all 
probability that is not his name anyway. Kindly bear in 
mind that I have not the smallest clue to proceed upon, 
even had I the time and willingness to proceed upon it.” 

“I am obliged to agree with you,” she said, “in thinking 
that your — ” 

“Besides,” continued Doctor Queed, “what reason have 
I for thinking that he expects or desires me to track him 
down? For all that he says here, that may be the last thing 
in the world he wishes.” 

Sharlee, turning toward him, her chin in her white-gloved 
hand, looked at him earnestly. 

“Do you care to have me discuss it with you?” 

“Oh, yes, I have invited an expression of opinion from 
you.” 

“Then I agree with you in thinking that your father is 
not treating you fairly. His attitude toward you is extraor- 
dinary, to say the least of it. But of course there must be 
some good reason for this. Has it occurred to you that he 
may be in some — situation where it is not possible for 
him to reveal himself to you?” 

“Such as what?” 

“Well, I don’t know — ” 

“Why does n’t he say so plainly in his letters then?” 

“ I don’t know.” 

The young man threw out his hands with a gesture which 
inquired what in the mischief she was talking about then. 

“Here is another thought,” said Sharlee, not at all dis- 
concerted. “Have you considered that possibly he may be 
doing this way — as a test?” 


QUEED 


73 


“Test of what?” 

“Of you. I mean that, wanting to — to have you with 
him now, he is taking this way of finding out whether or not 
you want him. Don’t you see what I mean? He appeals 
here to the natural feelings of a son, and then again he tells 
you to make friends and learn to like people. Evidently he 
is expecting something of you — I don’t know exactly what. 
But don’t you think, perhaps, that if you began a search 
for him, he would take it as a sign — ” 

“ I told you that there was no way in which a search, as 
you call it, could be begun. Nor, if there were, have I the 
smallest inclination to begin it. Nor, again, if I had, could 
I possibly take the time from My Book.” 

She was silent a moment. “There is, of course, one way 
in which you could find out at any moment.” 

“Indeed! What is that, pray?” 

“Mr. Tim Queed.” 

He smiled faintly but derisively. “Hardly. Of course 
Tim knows all about it. He told me once that he was 
present at the wedding of my parents; another time that 
my mother died when I was born. But he would add, and 
will add, not a word to these confidences; not even to assure 
me definitely that my father is still alive. He says that he 
has sworn an oath of secrecy. I called on him before I left 
New York. No, no; I may discover my father or he may 
discover me, or not, but we can rest absolutely assured that 
I shall get no help from Tim.” 

“But you can’t mean simply to sit still — ” 

“And leave matters to him. I do.” 

“But — but,” she still protested, “he is evidently un- 
happy, Mr. Queed — evidently counting on you for some- 
thing — ” 

“Then let him come out like a man and say plainly what 
he wants. I cannot possibly drop my work to try to solve 
entirely superfluous enigmas. Keep all this in mind — 
take an interest in it, will you?” he added briskly. “Pos- 
sibly I might need your help some day.” 


74 QUEED 

“ Certainly I will. I appreciate your telling me about it 
and I ’d be so glad to help you in any way that I could.” 

“How do you like my editorials?” he demanded ab- 
ruptly. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand a line of them!” 

He waved his hand indulgently, like a grandfather 
receiving the just tribute of his little ones. “They are for 
thinkers, experts,” said he, and picked up his pencil. 

The agent took the hint ; pushed back her chair ; her glove 
was unbuttoned and she slowly fastened it. In her heart 
was a great compassion for the little Doctor. 

“Mr. Queed, I want you to know that if I ever could be 
of help to you about anything, I ’d always think it a real 
pleasure. Please remember that, won’t you? Did you know 
I lived down this way, in the daytime?” 

“Lived?” 

She made a gesture toward the window, and away to the 
south and east. “My office* is only three blocks away, 
down there in the park — ” 

“Your office? You don’t work!” 

“Oh, don’t I though!” 

“Why, I thought you were a lady l" 

They were so close together that she was compelled to 
laugh full in his face, disclosing two rows of splendid little 
teeth and the tip of a rosy little tongue. Probably she could 
have crushed him by another pointing gesture, turned this 
time toward her honored great-grandfather who stood in 
marble in the square; but what was the use? 

“What are you laughing at?” he inquired mildly. 

“At your definition of a lady. Where on earth did you get 
it? Out of those laws of human society you write every 
night at my aunt’s?” 

“No,” said he, the careful scientist at once, “ no, I admit, 
if you like, that I used the term in a loose, popular sense. I 
would not seriously contend that females of gentle birth 
and breeding — ladies in the essential sense — are never 
engaged in gainful occupations — ” 


QUEED 75 

“You should n’t,” she laughed, “not in this city at ahy 
rate. It might astonish you to know how many females of 
gentle birth and breeding are engaged in gainful occupations 
on this one block alone. It was not ever thus with them. 
Once they had wealth and engaged in nothing but delicious 
leisure. But in 1861 some men came down here, about six 
to one, and took all this wealth away from them, at the same 
time exterminating the males. Result: the females, ladies 
in the essential sense, must either become gainful or starve. 
They have not starved. Sociologically, it’s interesting. 
Make Colonel Cowles tell you about it some time.” 

“ He has told me about it. In fact he tells me constantly. 
And this work that you do,” he said, not unkindly and not 
without interest, “what is it? Are you a teacher, perhaps, 
a . . . no! — You speak of an office. You are a clerk, 
doubtless, a bookkeeper, a stenographer, an office girl?” 

She nodded with exaggerated gravity. “You have guessed 
my secret. I am a clerk, bookkeeper, stenographer, and 
office girl. My official title, of course, is a little more frilly, 
but you describe — ” 

“Well? What is it?” 

“They call it Assistant Secretary of the State Department 
of Charities.” 

He looked astonished ; she had no idea his face could take 
on so much expression. 

“You! You l Why, how on earth did you get such a 
position ? ” 

“Pull,” said Sharlee. 

Their eyes met, and she laughed him down. 

“Who is the real Secretary to whom you are assistant?” 

“The nicest man in the world. Mr. Dayne — Rev. 
George Dayne.” 

“A parson! Does he know anything about his subject? 
Is he an expert? — a trained relief worker? Does he know 
Willoughby? And Smathers? And Conant?” 

“Knows them by heart. Quotes pages of them at a time 
in his letters without ever glancing at the books.” 

“And you?” 


76 QUEED 

“ I may claim some familiarity with their theories.” 

He fussed with his pencil. “I recall defining sociology for 
you one night at my boarding-house. . . .” 

'‘I remember/’ 

“Well,” said he, determined to find something wrong, 
“those men whom I mentioned to you are not so good as 
they think, particularly Smathers. I may as well tell you 
that I shall show Smathers up completely in my book.” 

“We shall examine your arguments with care and atten- 
tion. We leave no stone unturned to keep abreast of the 
best modern thought.” 

“It is extraordinary that such a position should be held 
by a girl like you, who can have no scientific knowledge of 
the many complex problems. . . . However,” he said, a 
ray of brightness lightening his displeasure, “your State is 
notoriously backward in this field. Your department, 1 
fancy, can hardly be more than rudimentary.” 

“It will be much, much more than that in another year 
or two. Why, we’re only four years old!” 

“So this is why you are interested in having editorials 
written about reformatories. It is a reformatory for women 
that you wish to establish?” 

“How did you know?” 

“I merely argue from the fact that your State is so 
often held up to reproach for lack of one. What is the 
plan?” 

“We are asking,” said the Assistant Secretary, “for a 
hundred thousand dollars — sixty thousand to buy the 
land and build, forty thousand for equipment and two 
years’ support. Modest enough, is it not? Of course 
we shall not get a penny from the present legislature. 
Legislatures love to say no; it dearly flatters their little 
vanity. We are giving them the chance to say no now. 
Then when they meet again, two years from now, we trust 
that they will be ready to give us what we ask — part of 
it, at any rate. We can make a start with seventy-five 
thousand dollars.” 


QUEED 77 

Queed was moved to magnanimity. “Look here. You 
have been civil to me — I will write that article for you 
Myself.” 

While Sharlee had become aware that the little Doctor 
was interested, really interested, in talking social science 
with her, she thought he must be crazy to offer such a contri- 
bution of his time. A guilty pink stole into her cheek. A re- 
formatory article by Mr. Queed would doubtless be scien- 
tifically pluperfect, but nobody would read it. Colonel 
Cowles, on the other hand, had never even heard of Wil- 
loughby and Smathers; but when he wrote an article people 
read it, and the humblest understood exactly what he was 
driving at. 

“Why — it’s very nice of you to offer to help us, but I 
could n’t think of imposing on your time — ” 

“ Naturally not,” said he, decisively ; “ but it happens that 
we have decided to allow a breathing-space in my series on 
taxation, that the public may digest what I have already 
written. I am therefore free to discuss other topics for a 
few days. For to-morrow’s issue, I am analyzing certain 
little understood industrial problems in Bavaria. On the 
following day — ” 

“It’s awfully good of you to think of it,” said Sharlee, 
embarrassed by his grave gaze. “I can’t tell you how I 
appreciate it. B\it — but — you see, there ’s a lot of special 
detail that applies to this particular case alone — oh, a 
great lot of it — little facts connected with peculiar State 
conditions and — and the history of our department, you 
know — and I have talked it over so thoroughly with the 
Colonel—” 

“ Here is Colonel Cowles now.” 

She breathed a sigh. Colonel Cowles, entering with the 
breath of winter upon him, greeted her affectionately. 
Queed, rather relieved that his too hasty offer had not been 
accepted, noted with vexation that his conversation with 
the agent had cost him eighteen minutes of time. Vigor- 
ously he readdressed himself to the currency problems of 


78 QUEED 

the Bavarians; the girl’s good-night, as applied to him, fell 
upon ears deafer than any post. 

Sharlee walked home through the tingling twilight ; four- 
teen blocks, and she did them four times a day. It was a 
still evening, clear as a bell and very cold; already stars 
were pushing through the dim velvet round; all the world 
lay white with a light hard snow, crusted and sparkling 
under the street lights. Her private fear about the whole 
matter was that Queed Senior was a person of a criminal 
mode of life, who, discovering the need of a young helper, 
was somehow preparing to sound and size up his long- 
neglected son. 


VII 

In which an Assistant Editor , experiencing the Common De- 
sire to thrash a Proof-Reader , makes a Humiliating Discov- 
ery; and of how Trainer Klinker gets a Pupil the Same 
Evening. 

T HE industrial problems of the Bavarians seemed an 
inoffensive thesis enough, but who can evade Des- 
tiny? 

Queed never read his own articles when they appeared 
in print in the Post. In this peculiarity he may be said to 
have resembled all the rest of the world, with the exception 
of the Secretary of the Tax Reform League, and the Assist- 
ant Secretary of the State Department of Charities. But 
not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate. 
On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter’s 
agent, Fortune gave Queed to hear a portion of his article 
on the Bavarians read aloud, and read with derisive laugh- 
ter. 

The incident occurred on a street-car, which he had taken 
because of the heavy snow-fall: another illustration of the 
tiny instruments with which Providence works out its 
momentous designs. Had he not taken the car — he was 
on the point of not taking it, when one whizzed invitingly 
up — he would never have heard of the insult that the Post's 
linotype had put upon him, and the course of his life might 
have been different. As it was, two men on the next seat 
in front were reading the Post and making merry. 

“ ... 'A lengthy procession of fleas harassed the diet.* 
Now what in the name of Bob . . .” 

Gradually the sentence worked its way into the closed 
fastness of the young man’s mind. It had a horrible famili- 
arity, like a ghastly parody on something known and dear. 


80 QUEED 

With a quick movement he leaned forward, peering over 
the shoulder of the man who held the paper. 

The man looked around, surprised and annoyed by the 
strange face breaking in so close to his own, but Queed 
paid no attention to him. Yes . . .it was his article they 
were mocking at — HIS article. He remembered the pas- 
sage perfectly. He had written: “A lengthy procession of 
pleas harassed the Diet.” His trained eye swept rapidly 
down the half column of print. There it was! “A proces- 
sion of fleas.” In his article! Fleas, unclean, odious vermin, 
in His Article ! 

Relatively, Queed cared nothing about his work on the 
Post , but for all the children of his brain, even the smallest 
and feeblest, he had a peculiar tenderness. He was more 
jealous of them than a knight of his honor, or a beauty of 
her complexion. No insult to his character could have 
enraged him like a slight put upon the least of these his 
articles. He sat back in his seat, feeling white, and some- 
thing clicked inside his head. He remembered having heard 
that click once before. It was the night he determined 
to evolve the final theory of social progress, which would wipe 
out all other theories as the steam locomotive had wiped 
out the prairie schooner. 

He knew well enough what that click meant now. He 
had got a new purpose, and that was to exact personal 
reparation from the criminal who had made Him and His 
Work the butt of street-car loafers. Never, it seemed to 
him, could he feel clean again until he had wiped off those 
fleas with gore. 

To his grim inquiry Colonel Cowles replied that the head 
proof-reader, Mr. Pat, was responsible for typographical 
errors, and Mr. Pat did not “come on” till 6.30. It was now 
but 5.50. Queed sat down, wrote his next day’s article and 
handed it to the Colonel, who read the title and coughed. 

“ I shall require no article from you to-morrow or next 
day. On the following day” — here the Colonel opened a 
drawer and consulted a schedule — “I shall receive with 


QUEED 81 

pleasure your remarks on ‘Fundamental Principles of Dis- 
tribution — Article Four.* ” 

Queed ascended to the next floor, a noisy, discordant 
floor, full of metal tables on castors, and long stone- topped 
tables not on castors, and Mergen thaler machines, and 
slanting desk-like structures holding fonts of type. Rough 
board partitions rose here and there ; over everything hung 
the deadly scent of acids from the engravers’ room. 

“That’s him now,’’ said an ink-smeared lad, and nodded 
toward a tall, gangling, mustachioed fellow in a black felt 
hat who had just come up the stairs. 

Queed marched straight for the little cubbyhole where 
the proof-readers and copy-holders sweated through their 
long nights. 

“You are Mr. Pat, head proof-reader of the Post?' 1 

“That’s me, sor,” said Mr. Pat, and he turned with rather 
a sharp glance at the other’s tone. 

“What excuse have you to offer for making my article 
ridiculous and me a common butt?” 

“An’ who the divil may you be, please?” 

“I am Mr. Queed, special editorial writer for this paper. 
Look at this.” He handed over the folded Post , with the 
typographical enormity heavily underscored in blue. “What 
do you mean by falsifying my language and putting into my 
mouth an absurd observation about the most loathsome of 
vermin?” 

Mr. Pat was at once chagrined and incensed. He hap- 
pened, further, to be in most sensitive vein as regards little 
oversights in his department. His professional pride was 
tortured with the recollection that, only three days before, 
he had permitted the Post to refer to old Major Lamar as 
“that immortal veterinary,” and upon the Post's seeking to 
retrieve itself the next day, at the Major’s insistent demand, 
he had fallen into another error. The hateful words had come 
out as “immoral veteran.” 

“Now look here ! ” said he. “There T s nothing to be gained 
talking that way. Ye’ve got me — I’ll give ye that! But 


82 QUEED 

what do ye expect? — eighty columns of type a night and 
niver a little harmless slip — ?” 

“You must be taught to make no slips with my articles. 
I’m going to punish you for that — ” 

' ‘ What-a-at ! Say that agin ! ’ ’ 

“Stand out here — lam going to give you a good thrash- 
ing. I shall whip ...” 

Another man would have laughed heartily and told the 
young man to trot away while the trotting was good. He 
was nearly half a foot shorter than Mr. Pat, and his face 
advertised his unmartial customs. But Mr. Pat had the 
swift fierce passions of his race; and it became to him an 
unendurable thing to be thus bearded by a little spectacled 
person in his own den. He saw red; and out shot his good 
right arm. 

The little Doctor proved a good sailer, but bad at making 
a landing. His course was arched, smooth, and graceful, 
but when he stopped, he did it so bluntly that men working 
two stories below looked up to ask each other who was dead. 
Typesetters left their machines and hurried up, fearing that 
here was a case for ambulance or undertaker. But they saw 
the fallen editor pick himself up, with a face of stupefied 
wonder, and immediately start back toward the angry proof- 
reader. 

Mr. Pat lowered redly on his threshhold. “G’awn now! 
Get away!” 

Queed came to a halt a pace away and stood looking at 
him. 

“G’awn, I tell ye! I don’t want no more of your foolin’!” 

The young man, arms hanging inoffensively by his side, 
stared at him with a curious fixity. 

These tactics proved strangely disconcerting to Mr. Pat, 
obsessed as he was by a sudden sense of shame at having 
thumped so impotent an adversary. 

“Leave me be, Mr. Queed. I ’m sorry I hit ye, and I niver 
would ’a’ done it — if ye had n’t — ” 

The man’s voice died away. He became lost in a great 


QUEED 83 

wonder as to what under heaven this little Four-eyes meant 
by standing there and staring at him with that white and 
entirely unfrightened face. 

Queed was, in fact, in the grip of a brand-new idea, an 
idea so sudden and staggering that it overwhelmed him. 
He could not thrash Mr. Pat. He could not thrash anybody. 
Anybody in the world that desired could put gross insult 
upon his articles and go scot-free, the reason being that the 
father of these articles was a physical incompetent. 

All his life young Mr. Queed had attended to his own 
business, kept quiet and avoided trouble. This was his first 
fight, because it was the first time that anybody had publicly 
insulted his work. In his whirling sunburst of indignation, 
he had somehow taken it for granted that he could punch 
the head of a proof-reader in much the same way that he 
punched the head off Smathers’s arguments. Now he sud- 
denly discovered his mistake, and the discovery was going 
hard with him. Inside him there was raging a demon of 
surprising violence of deportment ; it urged him to lay hold 
of some instrument of a rugged, murderous nature and 
assassinate Mr. Pat. But higher up in him, in his head, 
there spoke the stronger voice of his reason. While the 
demon screamed homicidally, reason coldly reminded the 
young man that not to save his life could he assassinate, 
or even hurt, Mr. Pat, and that the net result of another 
endeavor to do so would be merely a second mortifying 
atmospheric journey. Was it not unreasonable for a man, 
in a hopeless attempt to gratify irrational passion, to take a 
step the sole and certain consequences of which would be a 
humiliating soaring and curveting through the air? 

It was a terrible struggle, the marks of which broke out 
on the young man’s forehead in cold beads. But he was a 
rationalist among rationalists, and in the end his reason 
subdued his demon. Therefore, the little knot of linotypers 
and helpers who had stood wonderingly by while the two 
adversaries stared at each other, through a tense half- 
minute, now listened to the following dialogue: — 


84 QUEED 

“ I believe I said that I would give you a good thrashing. 
I now withdraw those words, for I find that I am unable to 
make them good.” 

“I guess you ain’t — what the divil did ye expect? Me 
to sit back with me hands behind me and leave ye — ” 

“I earnestly desire to thrash you, but it is plain to me 
that I am not, at present, in position to do so.” 

“Fergit it! What’s afther ye, Mr. Queed — ?” 

“To get in position to thrash you, would take me a year, 
two years, five years. It is not — no, it is not worth my 
time.” 

“Well, who asked f’r any av your time? But as f’r that, 
I’ll give ye your chance to get square — ” 

“I suppose you feel yourself free now to take all sorts of 
detestable liberties with my articles?” 

“Liberties — what’s bitin’ ye, man? Don’t I read revised 
proof on the leaded stuff every night, no matter what the 
rush is? When did ye ever before catch me — ?” 

“Physically, you are my superior, but muscle counts for 
very little in this world, my man. Morally, which is all that 
matters, I am your superior — you know that, don’t you? 
Be so good as to keep your disgusting vermin out of my 
articles in the future.” 

He walked away with a face which gave no sign of his 
inner turmoil. Mr. Pat looked after him, stirred and bewil- 
dered, and addressed his friends the lino typers angrily. 

“Something loose in his belfry, as ye might have sur- 
mised from thim damfool tax-drools.” 

For Mr. Pat was still another reader of the unanswerable 
articles, he being paid the sum of twenty-seven dollars per 
week to peruse everything that went into the Post , includ- 
ing advertisements of auction sales and for sealed bids. 

Queed returned to his own office for his hat and coat. 
Having heard his feet upon the stairs, Colonel Cowles called 
out: — 

“What was the rumpus upstairs, do you know? It 
sounded as if somebody had a bad fall.” 


QUEED 85 

“Somebody did get a fall, though not a bad one, I be- 
lieve.” 

“Who?” queried the editor briefly. 

« j »> 

In the hall, it occurred to Queed that perhaps he had 
misled his chief a little, though speaking the literal truth. 
The fall that some body had gotten was indeed nothing 
much, for people’s bodies counted for nothing so long as 
they kept them under. But the fall that this body’s self- 
esteem had gotten was no such trivial affair. It struck the 
young man as decidedly curious that the worst tumble his 
pride had ever received had come to him through his body, 
that part of him which he had always treated with the most 
systematic contempt. 

The elevator received him, and in it, as luck would have 
it, stood a tall young man whom he knew quite well. 

“Hello, there, Doc!” 

“How do you do, Mr. Klinker?” 

“Been up chinning your sporting editor, Ragsy Hurd. 
Trying to arrange a mill at the Mercury between Smithy 
of the Y. M. C. A. and Hank McGurk, the White Plains 
Cyclone.” 

“A mill—?” 

“ Scrap — boxin’ match, y’ know. Done up your writings 
for the day?” 

“My newspaper writings — yes.” 

In the brilliant close quarters of the lift, Klinker was 
looking at Mr. Queed narrowly. “Where you hittin’ for 
now? Paynter’s?” 

“Yes.” 

“Walkin’? — That’s right. I’ll go with you.” 

As they came out into the street, Klinker said kindly: 
“You ain’t feelin’ good, are you, Doc? You’re lookin’ 
white as a milk-shake.” 

“ I feel reasonably well, thank you. As for color, I have 
never had any, I believe.” 

“I don’t guess, the life you lead. Got the headache. 


86 QUEED 

haven’t you? Have it about half the time, now don’t you, 
hey?” 

“Oh, I have a headache quite frequently, but I never pay 
any attention to it.” 

“Well, you’d ought to. Don’t you know the headache 
is just nature tipping you off there’s something wrong in- 
side? I’ve been watching you at the supper table for some 
time now. That pallor you got ain’t natural pallor. You’re 
pasty, that’s right. I’ll bet segars you wake up three 
mornings out of four feelin’ like a dish of stewed prunes.” 

“If I do — though of course I can only infer how such 
a dish feels — it is really of no consequence, I assure 
you.” 

“Don’t you fool yourself! It makes a lot of consequence 
to you. Ask a doctor, if you don’t believe me. But I got 
your dia’nosis now, same as a medical man — that ’s right. 
I know what’s your trouble, Doc, just like you had told me 
yourself.” 

“Ah? What, Mr. Klinker?” 

“Exercise.” 

“You mean lack of exercise?” 

“ I mean,” said Klinker, “that you ’re fadin’ out fast for 
the need of it.” 

The two men pushed on up Centre Street, where the march 
of home-goers was now beginning to thin out, in a moment 
of silence. Queed glanced up at Klinker’s six feet of red 
beef with a flash of envy which would have been unimagin- 
able to him so short a while ago as ten minutes. Klinker 
was physically competent. Nobody could insult his work 
and laugh at the merited retribution. 

“ Come by my place a minute,” said Klinker. “ I got some- 
thing to show you there. You know the shop, o’ course?” 

No; Mr. Queed was obliged to admit that he did not. 

“I’m manager for Stark’s,” said Klinker, trying not to 
appear boastful. “Cigars, mineral waters, and periodicals. 
And a great rondy-vooze for the sporting men, politicians, 
and rounders of the town, if I do say it. I ’ve seen you hit 


QUEED 87 

by the window many; ’s the time, only your head was so full 
of studies you never noticed.” 

“Thank you, I have no time this evening, I fear — ” 

“Time? It won’t take any — it’s right the end of this 
block. You can’t do any studyin 7 before supper-time, any- 
how, because it 7 s near that now. I got something for you 
there.” 

They turned into Stark’s, a brilliantly-lit and prettily 
appointed little shop with a big soda-water plant at the 
front. To a white-coated boy who lounged upon the fount, 
Klinker spoke winged words, and the next moment Queed 
found himself drinking a foaming, tingling, hair-trigger 
concoction under orders to put it all down at a gulp. 

They were seated upon a bench of oak and leather uphol- 
stery, with an enormous mirror reproducing their back views 
to all who cared to see. Klinker was chewing a toothpick; 
and either a toothpick lasted him a long time, or the number 
he made away with in a year was simply stupendous. 

“Ever see a gymnasier, Doc?” 

No; it seemed that the Doc had not. 

“We got one here. There’s a big spare room behind the 
shop. Kind of a store-room it was, and the Mercuries have 
fitted it up as a gymnasier and athletic club. Only they’re 
dead ones and don’t use it much no more. Got kind of a 
fall this afternoon, did n’t you, Doc?” 

“What makes you think that?” 

“That eye you got. She’ll be a beaut to-morrow — 
skin ’s broke too. A bit of nice raw beefsteak clapped on it 
right now would do the world and all for it.” 

“Oh, it is of no consequence — ” 

“You think nothing about your body is consequence, 
Doc, that only your mind counts, and that’s just where 
you make your mistake. Your body’s got to carry your 
mind around, and if it lays down on you, what — ” 

“But I have no intention of letting my body lie down 
on me, as you put it, Mr. Klinker. My health is sound, my 
constitution — ” 


88 QUEED 

“Forget it, Doc. Can’t I look at you and see with my 
own eyes? You’re committing slow suicide by over-work. 
That’s what it is.” 

“As it happens, I am doing nothing of the sort. I have 
been working exactly this way for twelve years.” 

“Then all the bigger is the overdue bill nature’s got 
against you, and when she does hit you she’ll hit to kill. 
Where ’ll your mind and your studies be when we ’ ve planted 
your body down under the sod?” 

Mr. Queed made no reply. After a moment, preparing 
to rise, he said: “I am obliged to you for that drink. It is 
rather remarkable — ” 

“Headache all gone, hey?” 

“Almost entirely. I wish you would give me the name of 
the medicine. I will make a memorandum — ” 

“Nix,” said Klinker. 

“Nix? Nux I have heard of, but . . .” 

“Hold on,” laughed Klinker, as he saw Queed preparing 
to enter Nix in his note-book. “That ain’t the name of it, 
and I ain’t going to give it to you. Why, that slop only 
covers up the trouble, Doc — does more harm than good 
in the long run. You got to go deeper and take away the 
cause. Come back here and I ’ll show you your real med- 
icine.” 

“I’m afraid—” 

“Aw, don’t flash that open-faced clock of yours on me. 
That ’s your trouble, Doc — matching seconds against your 
studies. It won’t take a minute, and you can catch it up 
eating supper faster if you feel you got to.” 

Queed, curious, as well as decidedly impressed by Klink- 
er’s sure knowledge in a field where he was totally ignorant, 
was persuaded. The two groped their way down a long dark 
passage at the rear of the shop, and into a large room like 
a cavern. Klinker lit a flaring gas-jet and made a gesture. 

“The Mercury Athletic Club gymnasier and sporting- 
room.” 

It was a basement room, with two iron-grated windows 


QUEED 89 

at the back. Two walls were lined with stout shelves, 
partially filled with boxes. The remaining space, including 
wall-space, was occupied by the most curious and puzzling 
contrivances that Queed had ever seen. Out of the glut of 
enigmas there was but one thing — a large mattress upon 
the floor — that he could recognize without a diagram. 

“Your caretaker sleeps here, I perceive.” 

Klinker laughed. “Look around you, Doc. Take a good 
gaze.” 

Doc obeyed. Klinker picked up a “sneaker” from the 
floor and hurled it with deadly precision at a weight-and- 
pulley across the room. 

“There’s your medicine, Doc!” 

Orange-stick in mouth, he went around like a museum 
guide, introducing the beloved apparatus to the visitor 
under its true names and uses, the chest- weights, dumb- 
bells and Indian clubs, flying- rings, a rowing-machine, the 
horizontal and parallel bars, the punching-bag and trapeze. 
Klinker lingered over the ceremonial; it was plain that the 
gymnasier was very dear to him. In fact, he loved every- 
thing pertaining to bodily exercise and manly sport; he 
caressed a boxing-glove as he never caressed a lady’s hand; 
the smell of witch-hazel on a hard bare limb was more titil- 
lating to him than any intoxicant. The introduction over, 
Klinker sat down tenderly on the polished seat of the rowing- 
machine, and addressed Doctor Queed, who stood with an 
academic arm thrown gingerly over the horizontal bar. 

“There’s your medicine, Doc. And if you don’t take it — 
well, it may be the long good-by for yours before the flowers 
bloom again.” 

“How do you mean, Mr. Klinker — there is my medicine?” 

“I mean you need half an hour to an hour’s hardest kind 
of work right here every day, reg’lar as meals.” 

Queed started as though he had been stung. He cleared 
his throat nervously. 

“No doubt that would be beneficial — in a sense, but I 
rannot afford to take the time from My Book — ” 


90 QUEED 

“ That’s where you got it dead wrong. You can’t afford 
not to take the time. Any doctor’ll tell you the same as me, 
that you’ll never finish your book at all at the clip you’re 
hitting now. You’ll go with nervous prostration, and it’ll 
wipe you out like a fly. Why, Doc,” said Klinker, impress- 
ively, “you don’t reelize the kind of life you’re leading — 
all indoors and sede’tary and working twenty hours a day. 
I come in pretty late some nights, but I never come so late 
that there ain’t a light under your door. A man can’t stand 
it, I tell you, playing both ends against the middle that away. 
You got to pull up, or it’s out the door feet first for you.” 

Queed said uneasily: “One important fact escapes you, 
Mr. Klinker. I shall never let matters progress so far. When 
I feel my health giving way — ” 

“Needn’t finish — heard it all before. They think 
they’re going to stop in time, but they never do. Old pros- 
tration catches ’em first every crack. You think an hour a 
day exercise would be kind of a waste, ain’t that right? 
Kind of a dead loss off’n your book and studies?” 

“ I certainly do feel — ” 

“Well,* you ’re wrong. Listen here. Don’t you feel some 
days as if mebbe you could do better writing and harder 
writing if only you did n’t feel so mean?” 

“Well ... I will frankly confess that sometimes — ” 

“Didn’t I know it! Do you know what, Doc? If you 
knocked out a little time for reg’lar exercise, you’d find 
when bedtime came, that you ’d done better work than you 
ever did before.” 

Queed was silent. He had the most logical mind in the 
world, and now at last Klinker had produced an argument 
that appealed to his reason. 

“ I ’ll put it to you as a promise,” said Klinker, eyeing him 
earnestly. “One hour a day exercise, and you do more work 
in twenty-four hours than you’re doing now, besides feelin* 
one hundred per cent better all the time.” 

Still Queed was silent. One hour a day I 

“Try it for only a month,” said Klinker the Tempter r 


QUEED 91 

“I’ll help you — glad to do it — I need the drill myself. 
Gimme an hour a day for just a month, and I’ll bet you 
the drinks you wouldn’t quit after that Tor a hundred 
dollars.” 

Queed turned away from Klinker’s honest eyes, and 
wrestled the bitter thing out. Thirty Hours stolen from His 
Book l . . . Yesterday, even an hour ago, he would not have 
considered such an outrage for a moment. But now, driving 
him irresistibly toward the terrible idea, working upon him 
far more powerfully than his knowledge of headache, even 
than Klinker’s promise of a net gain in his working ability, 
was this new irrationally disturbing knowledge that he was 
a physical incompetent. ... If he had begun systematic 
exercise ten years ago, probably he could thrash Mr. Pat 
to-day. 

Yet an hour a day is not pried out of a sacred schedule 
of work without pains and anguish, and it was with a grim 
face that the Doc turned back to William Klinker. 

“Very well, Mr. Klinker, I will agree to make the experi- 
ment, tentatively — an hour a day for thirty days only.” 

“Right for you, Doc! You’ll never be sorry — take it 
from me.” 

Klinker was a brisk, efficient young man. The old gang 
that had fitted out the gymnasium had drifted away, and 
the thought of going once more into regular training, with 
a pupil all his own, was breath to his nostrils. He assumed 
charge of the ceded hour with skilled sureness. Rain or 
shine, the Doctor was to take half an hour’s hard walking 
in the air every day, over and above the walk to the office. 
Every afternoon at six — at which hour the managerial 
duties at Stark’s terminated — he was to report in the gym 
for half an hour’s vigorous work on the apparatus. This 
iron-clad regime was to go into effect on the morrow. 

“I’ll look at you stripped,” said Klinker, eyeing his new 
pupil thoughtfully, “and see first what you need. Then I ’ll 
lay out a reg’lar course for you — exercises for all parts of 
the body. Got any trunks?” 


92 QUEED 

Queed looked surprised. “I have one small one — a 
steamer trunk, as it is called.” 

Klinker explained what he meant, and the Doctor feared 
that his wardrobe contained no such article. 

“Ne’mmind. I can fit you up with a pair. Left Hand 
Tom’s they used to be, him that died of the scarlet fever 
Thanksgiving. And say, Doc!” 

“Well?” 

“Here’s the first thing I ’ll teach you. Never mister your 
sparring-partner. ’ ’ 

The Doc thought this out, laboriously, and presently 
said: “Very well, William.” 

“Call me Buck, the same as all the boys.” 

Klinker came toward him holding out an object made of 
red velveteen about the size of a pocket handkerchief. 

“ Put these where you can find them to-morrow. You can 
have ’em. Left Hand Tom ’s gone where he don’t need ’em 
any more.” 

“What are they? What does one do with them?” 

“They’re your trunks. You wear ’em.” 

“Where? On — what portion, I mean?” 

“They’re like little pants,” said Klinker. 

The two men walked home together over the frozen 
streets. Queed was taciturn and depressed. He was an- 
noyed by Klinker’s presence and irritated by his conversa- 
tion; he wanted nothing in the world so much as to be let 
alone. But honest Buck Klinker remained unresponsive to 
his mood. All the way to Mrs. Paynter’s he told his new 
pupil grisly stories of men he had known who had thought 
that they could work all day and all night, and never take 
any exercise. Buck kindly offered to show the Doc their 
graves. 


VIII 

Formal Invitation to Fiji to share Queed' s Dining-Room {pro- 
vided it is very cold upstairs); and First Outrage upon the 
Sacred Schedule of Hours . 

Q UEED supped in an impenetrable silence. The 
swelling rednesses both above and below his left 
eye attracted the curious attention of the boarders, 
but he ignored their glances, and even Klinker forbore to 
address him. The meal done, he ascended to his sacred 
chamber, but not alas, to remain. 

For a full week, the Scriptorium had been uninhabitable 
by night, the hands of authors growing too numb there to 
write. On this night, conditions were worse than ever; the 
usual valiant essay was defeated with more than the usual 
ease. Queed fared back to his dining-room, as was now 
becoming his melancholy habit. And to-night the necessity 
was exceptionally trying, for he found that the intrusive 
daughter of the landlady had yet once again spread her 
mathematics there before him. 

Nor could Fill this time claim misunderstanding and 
accident. She fully expected the coming of Mr. Queed, and 
had been nervously awaiting it. The state of mind thus 
induced was not in the least favorable to doing algebra 
successfully or pleasurably. No amount of bodily comfort 
could compensate Fifi for having to have it. But her mother 
had ruled the situation to-night with a strong hand and a 
flat foot. The bedroom was entirely too cold for Fifi. She 
must, positively must, go down to the warm and comfort- 
able dining-room, — do you hear me, Fifi? As for Mr. 
Queed — well, if he made himself objectionable, Sharlee 
would simply have to give him another good talking to. 


94 QUEED 

Yet Fifi involuntarily cowered as she looked up and mur- 
mured : “ Oh — good evening ! ” 

Mr. Queed bowed. In the way of conveying displeas- 
ure, he had in all probability the most expressive face in 
America. 

He passed around to his regular place, disposed his books 
and papers, and placed his Silence sign in a fairly conspicu- 
ous position. This followed his usual custom. Yet his man- 
ner of making his arrangements to-night wanted something 
of his ordinary aggressive confidence. In fact, his promise 
to give an hour a day to exercise lay on his heart like lead, 
and the lumps on his eye, large though they were, did not 
in the least represent the dimensions of the fall he had re- 
ceived at the hands of Mr. Pat. 

Fifi was looking a little more fragile than when we saw 
her last, a little more thin-cheeked, a shade more ethereal- 
eyed. Her cough was quite bad to-night, and this increased 
her nervousness. How could she help from disturbing him 
with that dry tickling going on right along in her throat? 
It had been a trying day, when everything seemed to go 
wrong from the beginning. She had waked up feeling very 
listless and tired; had been late for school; had been kept 
in for Cicero. In the afternoon she had been going to a tea 
given to her class at the school, but her mother said her cold 
was too bad for her to go, and besides she really felt too tired. 
She had n’t eaten any supper, and had been quite cross with 
her mother in their talk about the dining-room, which was 
the worst thing that had happened at all. And now at nine 
o’clock she wanted to go to bed, but her algebra would not, 
would not come right, and life was horrible, and she was unfit 
to live it anyway, and she wished she was . . . 

“You are crying,” stated a calm young voice across the 
table. 

Brought up with a cool round turn, greatly mortified, 
Fifi thought that the best way to meet the emergency was 
just to say nothing. 

“What is the matter?” demanded the professorial tones. 


OUEED 95 

“Oh, nothing,’’ she said, winking back the tears and try- 
ing to smile, apologetically — “just silly reasons. I — I’ve 
spent an hour and ten minutes on a problem here, and it 
won’t come right. I’m — sorry I disturbed you.” 

There was a brief silence. Mr. Queed cleared his throat. 

“You cannot solve your problem?” 

“ I have n’t yet,” she sniffed bravely, “but of course I will 
soon. Oh, I understand it very well. . . .” 

She kept her eyes stoutly fixed upon her book, which 
indicated that not for worlds would she interrupt him 
further. Nevertheless she felt his large spectacles upon her. 
And presently he astonished her by saying, resignedly — 
doubtless he had decided that thus could the virginal calm 
be most surely and swiftly restored: — 

“Bring me your book. I will solve your problem.” 

“Oh!” said (Fifi, choking down a cough. And then, “Do 
you know all about algebra, too?” 

It seemed that Mr. Queed in his younger days had once 
made quite a specialty of mathematics, both lower, like 
Fifi’s, and also far higher. The child’s polite demurs were 
firmly overridden. Soon she was established in a chair at 
his side, the book open on the table between them. 

“Indicate the problem,” said Mr. Queed. 

Fifi indicated it: No. 71 of the collection of stickers known 
as Miscellaneous Review. It read as follows : 

71. A laborer, having built 105 rods of stone fence, found that if he had 
built 2 rods less a day he would have been 6 days longer in completing 
the job. How many rods a day did he build ? 

Queed read this through once and announced: “He built 
seven rods a day.” 

Fifi stared. “Why — how in the world, Mr Queed — ” 

“Let us see if I am right. Proceed. Read me what you 
have written down.” 

“Let x equal the number of rods he built each day,’ f 
began Fifi bravely. 

“Proceed.” 


96 QUEED 

“Then 105 divided by x equals number of days con- 
sumed. And 105 divided by x— 2 equals number of days 
consumed, if he had built 2 rods less a day.” 

“Of course.” 

“And {105 + x— 2) +d = number of days consumed if it 
had taken him six days longer.” 

“Nothing of the sort.” 

Fifi coughed. “I don’t see why, exactly.” 

“When the text says ‘six days longer,’ it means longer 
than what?” 

“Why — longer than ever.” 

“Doubtless. But you must state it in terms of the prob- 
lem.” 

“ In terms of the problem,” murmured Fifi, her red-brown 
head bowed over the bewildering book — “in terms of the 
problem.” 

“Of course,” said her teacher, “there is but one thing 
which longer can mean ; that is longer than the original rate 
of progress. Vet you add the six to the time required under 
the new rate of progress.” 

“I — I’m really afraid I don’t quite see. I ’m dreadfully 
stupid, I know — ” 

“Take it this way then. You have set down here two 
facts. One fact is the number of days necessary under the 
old rate of progress ; the other is the number of days neces- 
sary under the new rate. Now what is the difference between 
them?” 

“Why — is n’t that just what I don’t know?” 

“I can’t say what you don’t know. This is something 
that I know very well.” 

“But you know everything,” she murmured. 

Without seeking to deny this, Queed said: “It tells you 
right there in the book.” 

“ I don’t see it,” said Fifi, nervously looking high and low, 
not only in the book but all over the room. 

The young man fell back on the inductive method: 
“What is that six then?” 


QUEED 97 

“Oh! Now I see. It’s the difference in the number of 
days consumed — is n’t it?” 

“Naturally. Now put down your equation. No, no! The 
greater the rate of progress, the fewer the number of days. 
Do not attempt to subtract the greater from the less.” 

Now Fifi figured swimmingly: 

IQ 5 iq 5 _- 6 

X-2 X 

705X— 105* + 2I0 = 6x 2 — I2iC 

6X 2 — 12 #=210 
6x 2 — I2X — 210=0 

x 2 — 2x — 35=0 
(x-7) (x+ 5 ) = ° 

x=7 or — 5 

She smiled straight into his eyes, sweetly and fearlessly, 
“Seven! Just what you said! Oh, if I could only do them 
like you ! I ’m ever and ever so much obliged, Mr. Queed — 
and now I can go to bed.” 

Mr. Queed avoided Fifi’s smile; he obviously deliberated, 

“If you have any more of these terrible difficulties,” he 
said slowly, “it is n’t necessary for you to sit there all even- 
ing and cry over them. You . . . may ask me to show 
you.” 

“Oh, could I really! Thank you ever so much. But no, I 
won’t be here, you see. I did n’t mean to come to-night — • 
truly, Mr. Queed — I know I bother you so — only Mother 
made me.” 

“Your mother made you? Why?” 

“Well — it’s right cold upstairs, you know,” said Fifi, 
gathering up her books, “and she thought it might not be 
very good for my cough. ...” 

Queed glanced impatiently at the girl’s delicate face. A 
frown deepened on his brow; he cleared his throat with 
annoyance. 


98 QUEED 

“Oh, I am willing/’ he said testily, “for you to bring your 
work here whenever it is very cold upstairs.” 

“Oh, how good you are, Mr. Queed!” cried Fifi, stag- 
gered by his nobility. “But of course I can’t think of 
bothering — ” 

“I should not have asked you,” he interrupted her, irrit- 
ably, “if I had not been willing for you to come.” 

But for all boarders, their comfort and convenience, Fifi 
had the great respect which all of us feel for the source of 
our livelihood; and, stammering grateful thanks, she again 
assured him that she could not make such a nuisance of 
herself. However, of course Mr. Queed had his way, as he 
always did. 

This point definitely settled, he picked up his pencil, 
which was his way of saying, “And now, for heaven’s sake 
— good-night!” But Fifi, her heart much softened toward 
him, stood her ground, the pile of school-books tucked under 
her arm. 

“Mr. Queed — I — wonder if you won’t let me get some- 
thing to put on your forehead? That bruise is so dread- 
ful—” 

“Oh, no! No! It’s of no consequence whatever.” 

“But I don’t think you can have noticed how bad it is. 
Please let me, Mr. Queed. Just a little dab of arnica or 
witch-hazel — ” 

“My forehead does very well as it is, I assure you.” 

Fifi turned reluctantly. “Indeed something on it would 
make it get well so much faster. I wish you would — ” 

Ah ! There was a thought. As long as he had this bruise 
people would be bothering him about it. It was a world 
where a man could n’t even get a black eye without a 
thousand busybodies commenting on it. 

“If you are certain that its healing will be hastened — ” 

“ Positive!” cried Fifi happily, and vanished without more 
speech. 

One Hour a Day to be given to Bodily Exercise. . . . How 
long, O Lord, how long! 


QUEED 99 

Fifi returned directly with white cloths, scissors, and two 
large bottles. 

“I won’t take hardly a minute — you see! Listen, Mr. 
Queed. One of these bottles heals fairly well and does n’t 
hurt at all worth mentioning. That’s witch-hazel. The 
other heals very well and fast, but stings — well, a lot; and 
that’s turpentine. Which will you take?” 

“The turpentine,” said Mr. Queed in a martyr’s voice. 

Fifi’s hands were very deft. In less than no time, she made 
a little lint pad, soaked it in the pungent turpentine, applied 
it to the unsightly swelling, and bound it firmly to the young 
man’s head with a snowy band. In all of Mr. Queed’s life, 
this was the first time that a woman had ministered to him. 
To himself, he involuntarily confessed that the touch of the 
girl’s hands upon his forehead was not so annoying as you 
might have expected. 

Fifi drew off and surveyed her work sympathetically yet 
professionally. The effect of the white cloth riding aslant 
over the round glasses and academic countenance was won- 
derfully rakish and devil-may-care. 

“Do you feel the sting much so far?” 

“A trifle,” said the Doctor. 

“ It works up fast to a kind of — climax, as I remember, 
and then slowly dies away. The climax will be pretty bad — 
I ’m so sorry ! But when it ’s at its worst just say to yourself, 
‘This is doing me lots and lots of good,’ and then you won’t 
mind so much.” 

“ I will follow the directions,” said he, squirming in his 
chair. 

“Thank you for letting me do it, and for the algebra, and 
— good-night.” 

“Good-night.” 

He immediately abandoned all pretense of working. To 
him it seemed that the climax of the turpentine had come 
instantly; there was no more working up about it than there 
was about a live red coal. The mordant tooth bit into his 
blood; he rose and tramped the floor, muttering savagely 


ioo QUEED 

to himself. But he would not pluck the hateful thing off, no, 
no — for that would have been an admission that he was 
wrong in putting it on ; and he was never wrong. 

So Bylash, reading one of Miss Jibby’s’works in the parlor, 
and pausing for a drink of water at the end of a glorious 
chapter, found him tramping and muttering. His flying 
look dared Bylash to address him, and Bylash prudently 
took the dare. But he poured his drink slowly, stealing 
curious glances and endeavoring to catch the drift of the 
little Doctor’s murmurings. 

In this attempt he utterly failed, because why? Obviously 
because the Doctor cursed exclusively in the Greek and 
Latin languages. 

In five minutes, Queed was upon his work again. Not 
that the turpentine was yet dying slowly away, as Fifi had 
predicted that it would. On the contrary it burned like the 
fiery furnace of Shadrach and Abednego. But One Hour 
a Day to be given to Bodily Exercise! ... Oh, every second 
must be made to count now, whether one’s head was break- 
ing into flame or not. 

Whatever his faults or foibles, Mr. Queed was captain of 
his soul. But the fates were against him to-night. In half 
an hour, when the sting — they called this conflagration a 
sting! — was 'beginning to get endurable and the pencil 
to move steadily, the door opened and in strode Professor 
Nicolovius; he, it seemed, wanted matches. Why under 
heaven, if a man wanted matches, could n’t he buy a thou- 
sand boxes and store them in piles in his room? 

The old professor apologized blandly for his intrusion, but 
seemed in no hurry to make the obvious reparation. He 
drew a match along the bottom of the mantle-shelf, eyeing 
the back of the little Doctor’s head as he did so, and slowly 
lit a cigar. 

“I’m sorry to see that you’ve met with an accident, Mr. 
Queed. Is there anything, perhaps, that I might do?” 

“Nothing at all,5thanks,” said Queed, so indignantly that 
Nicolovius dropped the subject at once. 


QUEED xoi 

The star-boarder of Mrs. Paynter’s might have been fifty- 
five or he might have been seventy, and his clothes had long 
been the secret envy of Mr. Bylash. He leaned against the 
mantel at his ease, blowing blue smoke. 

“ You find this a fairly pleasant place to sit of an evening, 
I daresay!” he purred, presently.’ 

The back of the young man’s head was uncompromisingly 
stern. “ I might as well try to write in the middle of Centre 
Street.” 

“So?” said Nicolovius, not catching his drift. “I should 
have thought that — ” 

“The interruptions,” said Queed, “are constant.” 

The old professor laughed. “Upon my word, I don’t 
blame you for saying that. The gross communism of a 
boarding-house ... it does gall one at times! So far as 
I am concerned, I relieve you of it at once. Good-night.” 

The afternoon before Nicolovius had happened to walk 
part of the way downtown with Mr. Queed, and had been 
favored with a fair amount of his stately conversation. He 
shut the door now somewhat puzzled by the young man’s 
marked curtness; but then Nicolovius knew nothing about 
the turpentine. 

The broken evening wore on, with progress slower than 
the laborer’s in Problem 71, when he decided to build two 
rods less a day. At eleven, Miss Miller, who had been to 
the theatre, breezed in; she wanted a drink of water. At 
11.45 — Queed’s open watch kept accurate tally — there 
came Trainer Klinker, who, having sought his pupil vainly 
in the Scriptorium, retraced his steps to rout him out below. 
At sight of the tall bottle in Klinker’s hand Queed shrank, 
fearing that Fifi had sent him with a second dose of turpen- 
tine. But the bottle turned out to contain merely a rare 
unguent just obtained by Klinker from'his friend Smithy, the 
physical instructor at the Y. M. C. A., and deemed sur- 
prisingly effective for the development of the academic bicep. 

At last there was blessed quiet, and he could write again. 
The city slept; the last boarder was abed; the turpentine 


102 


QUEED 


had become a peace out of pain ; only the ticking of the clock 
filtered into the perfect calm of the dining-room. The little 
Doctor of Mrs. Paynter’s stood face to face with hie love, 
embraced his heart's desire. He looked into the heart of 
Science and she gave freely to her lord and master. Sprawled 
there over the Turkey-red cloth, which was not unhaunted 
by the ghosts of dead dinners, he became chastely and di- 
vinely happy. His mind floated away into the empyrean ; 
he saw visions of a far more perfect Society; dreamed 
dreams of the ascending spiral whose law others had groped 
at, but he would be the first to formulate ; caught and fondled 
the secret of the whole great Design; reduced it to a rule- 
of-thumb to do his bidding; bestrode the whole world like a 
great Colossus. . . . 

From which flight he descended with a thud to observe 
that it was quarter of two o’clock, and the dining-room was 
cold with the dying down of the Latrobe, and the excellent 
reading-lamp in the death-throes of going out. 

He went upstairs in the dark, annoyed with himself for 
having overstayed his bedtime. Long experimentation had 
shown him that the minimum of sleep he could get along 
with to advantage was six and one-half hours nightly. This 
meant bed at 1.30 exactly, and he hardly varied it five 
minutes in a year. To his marrow he was systematic; he 
was as definite as an adding-machine, as practical as a cash 
register. But even now, on this exceptional night, he did 
not go straight to bed. Something still remained to be 
accomplished : an outrage upon his sacred Schedule. 

In the first halcyon days at Mrs. Paynter’s, before the 
board question ever came up at all, the iron-clad Schedule 
of Hours under which he was composing his great work had 
stood like this: 


8.20 

8.40 

1.30 


Breakfast 


Evolutionary Sociology 
Dinner 


2 


7 


Evolutionary Sociology 
Supper 


7.20 to 1.30 


Evolutionary Sociology 


QUEED 103 

But the course of true love never yet ran smooth, and 
this schedule was too ideal to stand. First the Post had come 
along and nicked a clean hour out of it, and now his Body 
had unexpectedly risen and claimed yet another hour. And, 
beyond even this . . . some devilish whim had betrayed 
him to-night into offering his time for the service and uses 
of the landlady’s daughter in the puling matter of algebra. 

No . . .no! He would not put that in. The girl could 
not be so selfish as to take advantage of his over-generous 
impulse. She must understand that his time belonged to the 
ages and the race, not to the momentary perplexities of a 
high school dunce. ... At the worst it would be only five 
minutes here and there — say ten minutes a week; forty 
minutes a month. No, no! He would not put that in. 

But the hour of Bodily Exercise could not be so evaded. 
It must go in. On land or sea there was no help for that. 
For thirty days henceforward at the least — and a voice 
within him whispered that it would be for much longer — 
his Schedule must stand like this : 

8.20 Breakfast 

8.40 Evolutionary Sociology 

1.30 Dinner 

2 Evolutionary Sociology 

4.45 to 5.15 Open-Air Pedes trianism 

5.15 to 6.15 The Post 

6.15 to 6.45 Klinker’s Exercises for all Parts of the 

Body 

7 Supper 

7.20 Evolutionary Sociology 

Hand clasped in his hair, Queed stared long at this wreck- 
age with a sense of foreboding and utter despondency. 
Doubtless Mr. Pat, who was at that moment peacefully 
pulling a pipe over his last galleys at the Post office, would 
have been astonished to learn what havoc his accursed fleas 
had wrought with the just expectations of posterity. 


IX 


Of Charles Gardiner West, President-Elect of Blaines College, 
and his Ladies Fair: all in Mr. West's Lighter Manner. 

HE closing German of the Thursday Cotillon, hard 



upon the threshold of a late Lent, was a dream of 


A pure delight. Six of them in the heart of every 
season since 1871, these Germans have become famous 
wherever the light fantastic toe of aristocracy trips and eke 
is tripped. They are the badge of quality, and the test of it, 
the sure scaling-rod by which the frightened debutante may 
measure herself at last, to ask of her mirror that night, with 
who can say what tremors: “Am I a success ?” Over these 
balls strangers go mad. They come from immense distances 
to attend them, sometimes with superciliousness; are 
instantly captivated ; and returning to their homes, wherever 
they may be, sell out their businesses for a song and move on, 
to get elected if they can, which does not necessarily follow. 

Carriages, in stately procession, disembarked their pre- 
cious freight; the lift, laden with youth and beauty, shot up 
and down like a glorious Jack-in-the-Box; over the corridors 
poured a stream of beautiful maidens and handsome gentle- 
men, to separate for their several tiring-rooms, and soon 
to remeet in the palm-decked vestibule. Within the great 
room, couples were already dancing; Fetzy’s Hungarians 
on a dais, concealed behind a wild thicket of growing things, 
were sighing out a wonderful waltz; rows of white-covered 
chairs stood expectantly on all four sides of the room ; and 
the chaperones, august and handsome, stood in a stately 
line to receive and to welcome. And to them came in salu- 
tation Charles Gardiner West and, beside him, the lady 
whom he honored with his hand that evening, Miss Milli- 
cent Avery, late of Maunch Chunk, but now of Ours. 


QUEED 105 

They made their devoirs to the dowagers; silently they 
chose their seats, which he bound together with a handker- 
chief in a true lovers’ knot; and, Fetzy’s continuing its 
heavenly work, he put his arm about her without speech, 
and they floated away upon the rhythmic tide. 

At last her voice broke the golden silence: “I feel enor- 
mously happy to-night. I don’t know why.” 

The observation might seem unnoteworthy to the casual, 
but it carried them all around the room again. 

“Fortune is good to me,” said he, as lightly as he could, 
“to let me be with you when you feel like that.” 

He had never seen her so handsome; the nearness of her 
beauty intoxicated him; her voice was indolent, provoca- 
tive. She was superbly dressed in white, and on her rounded 
breast nodded his favor, a splendid corsage of orchid and 
lily-of-the-valley. 

“Fortune?” she queried. “Don’t you think that men 
bring these things to pass for themselves?” 

They had made the circle on that, too, before West said ; 
“I wonder if you begin to understand what a power you 
have of bringing happiness to me.” 

He looked, and indeed, for the transient moment, he felt, 
like a man who must have his answer, for better or worse, 
within the hour. She saw his look, and her eyes fell before 
it, not wholly because she knew how to do that to exactly 
the best advantage. Few persons would have mistaken 
Miss Avery for a wholly inexperienced and unsophisticated 
girl. But how was she to know that that same look had risen 
in the eyes of West, and that same note, obviously sincere, 
broken suddenly into his pleasant voice, for many, many 
of the fair? 

The music died in a splendid crash, and they threaded 
their way to their seats, slowly and often stopped, across 
the crowded floor. Many eyes followed them as they walked. 
She was still “new” to us; she was beautiful; she was her 
own young lady, and something about her suggested that 
she would be slightly unsafe for boys, the headstrong, 


io6 QUEED 

and the foolish; rumor made her colossally wealthy. As 
for him, he was the glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
and much more than that besides. Of an old name but a 
scanty fortune, he had won his place by his individual 
merits ; chiefly , perhaps, for so wags the world, by an exterior 
singularly prepossessing and a manner that was a possession 
above rubies. His were good looks of the best fashion of 
men’s good looks; not a^tall man, he yet gave the effect 
of tallness, so perfect was his carriage, so handsome his ad- 
dress. And he was as clever as charming; cultured as 
the world knows culture; literary as the term goes; nor was 
there any one who made a happier speech than he, whether in 
the forum or around the festal board. Detractors, of course, 
he had — as which of those who raise their heads above the 
dead level have not? — but they usually contented them- 
selves with saying, as Buck Klinker had once said, that his 
manners were a little too good to be true. To most he seemed 
a fine type of the young American of the modern South; a 
brave gentleman; a true Democrat with all his honors; and, 
though he had not yet been tested in any position of respon- 
sibility, a rising man who held the future in his hand. 

They took their seats, and at last he freed himself from 
the unsteadying embarrassment which had shaken him at 
the first sight of her under the brilliant lights of the ball- 
room. 

“Two things have happened to make this seventh of 
March a memorable day for me,” said he. “Two great 
honors have come to me. They are both for your ear alone.” 

She flung upon him the masked battery of her eyes. 
They were extraordinary eyes, gray and emerald, not large, 
but singularly long. He looked fully into them, and she 
slowly smiled. 

“The other honor,” said Charles Gardiner West, “is of a 
commoner kind. They want to make me president of 
Blaines College.” 

“Oh — really ! ’ ’ said Miss Avery, and paused. 4 4 And shall 
you let them do it?” 


QUEED 107 

He nodded, suddenly thoughtful and serious. “Long 
before snow flies, Semple & West will be Semple and Some- 
thing else. They’ll elect me in June. I needn’t say that 
no one must know of this now — but you.” 

“Of course. It is a great honor,” she said, with faint 
enthusiasm. “But why are you giving up your business? 
Does n’t it interest you?” 

He made a large gesture. “Oh, it interests me. . . . But 
what does it all come to, at the last? A man aspires to find 
some better use for his abilities than dollar-baiting, don’t 
you think?” 

Miss Avery privately thought not, though she certainly 
did not like his choice of terms. 

“ If a man became the greatest stock-jobber in the world, 
who would remember him after he was gone? Miss Avery, 
I earnestly want to serve. My deepest ambition is to leave 
some mark for the better upon my environment, my city, 
and my State. I am baring my small dream for you to look 
at, you see. Now this little college . . .” 

But a daring youth by the name of Beverley Byrd bore 
Miss Avery away for the figure which was just then form- 
ing, and the little college hung in the air for the nonce. Mr. 
West was so fortunate as to secure the hand of Miss Wey- 
land for the figure, he having taken the precaution to ask 
that privilege when he greeted her some minutes since. 
Couple behind couple they formed, the length of the great 
room, and swung away on a brilliant march. 

“ It’s going to be a delicious German — can’t you tell by 
the feel ? ” began Sharlee, doing the march with a deux-temps 
step. “ I ’m so glad to see you, for it seems ages since we met, 
though, you know, it was only last week. Is not that a nice 
speech for greeting? Only I must tell you that I ’ve said it 
to four other men already, and the evening is yet young.” 

“ Is there nothing in all the world that you can say, quite 
new and special, for me?” 

“Oh, yes! For one thing your partner to-night is alto- 
gether the loveliest thing I ever saw. And for another — ” 


QUEED 


108 

“ I am listening.” 

“ For another, her partner to-night is quite the nicest man 
in all this big, big room.” 

“And how many men have you said that to to-night, here 
in the youth of the evening?” 

But the figure had reached that point where the paths of 
partners must diverge for a space, and at this juncture 
Sharlee whirled away from him. Around and up the room 
swept the long file of low-cut gowns and pretty faces, and 
step for step across the floor moved a similar line of swallow- 
tail and masculinity. At the head of the room the two lines 
curved together again, round meeting round, and here, in 
good time, the lovely billow bore on Sharlee, who slipped 
her little left hand into West’s expectant right with the 
sweetest air in the world. 

“Nobody but you, Charles Gardiner West,” said she. 

The whistle blew; the music changed; and off they went 
upon the dreamy valse. 

There are dancers in this world, and other dancers; but 
Sharlee was the sort that old ladies stop and watch. Of her 
infinite poetry of motion it is only necessary to say that she 
could make even “the Boston” look graceful; as witness 
her now. In that large room, detectives could have found 
men who thought Sharlee decidedly prettier than Miss 
Avery. Her look was not languorous; her voice was not 
provocative ; her eyes were not narrow and tip-tilted ; they 
did not look dangerous in the least, unless you so regard all 
extreme pleasure derived from looking at anything in the 
nature of eyes. Nor was there anything in the least busi- 
nesslike, official, or stenographic about her manner. If her 
head bulged with facts about the treatment of the deficient 
classes, no hint of that appeared in her talk at parties. Few 
of the young men she danced with thought her clever, and 
this shows how clever she really was. For there are men in 
this world who will run ten city blocks in any weather to 
avoid talking to a woman who knows more than they do, 
and knows it, and shows that she knows that she knows it* 


QUEED 109 

Charles Gardiner West looked down at Sharlee; and the 
music singing in his blood, and the measure that they trod 
together, was all a part of something splendid that belonged 
to them alone in the world. Another man at such a moment 
would have contented himself with a pretty speech, but 
West gave his sacred confidence. He told Sharlee about the 
presidency of Blaines College. 

Sharlee did not have to ask what he would do with such 
an offer. She recognized at sight the opportunity for ser- 
vice he had long sought; and she so sincerely rejoiced and 
triumphed in it for him that his heart grew very tender 
toward her, and he told her all his plans; how he meant 
to make of Blaines College a great enlightened modern 
institution which should turn out a growing army of brave 
young men for the upbuilding of the city and the state. 

“They elect me the first of June. Of course I am supposed 
to know nothing about it yet, and you must keep it as a 
great secret if you please. I give up my business in April. 
The next month goes' to my plans, arranging and laying 
out a great advertising campaign for the September open- 
ing. Early in June I shall sail for Europe, nominally for a 
little rest, but really to study the school systems of the old 
world. The middle of August will find me at my new desk, 
oh, so full of enthusiasms and high hopes !”* 

“It’s splendid. . . . Oh, how fine!” paeaned she. 

Upon the damask wrapping of Sharlee’s chair lay a great 
armful of red, red roses, the gift of prodigal young Beverley 
Byrd, and far too large to carry. She lifted them up ; scented 
their fragrance; selected and broke a perfect flower from its 
long stem ; and held it out with a look. 

“The Assistant Secretary of the State Department of 
Charities presents her humble duty to President West.” 

“Ah! Then the president commands his minion to place 
it tenderly in his buttonhole.” 

“Look at the sea of faces . . . lorgnettes, too. The 
minion dassen't .” 

“Oh, that we two were Maying!” 


no QUEED 

“You misread our announcement,” said Beverley Byrd, 
romping up. “No opening for young men here, Gardyl 
Butt out.” 

West left her, his well-shaped head in something of a 
whirl. In another minute he was off with Miss Avery upon 
a gallant two-step. 

Fetzy’s played on; the dancers floated or hopped accord- 
ing to their nature ; and presently a waltz faded out and in a 
breath converted itself into the march for supper, the same 
air always for I don’t know how many years. 

Miss Avery rose slowly from her seat, a handsome siren 
shaped, drilled, fitted, polished from her birth for nothing else 
than the beguiling of lordly man. From the heart of her 
beautiful bouquet she plucked a spray of perfect lily-of-the- 
valley, and, eyes upon her own flowers, held it out to 
West. 

“They are beautiful,” she said in her languorous voice. 
“I had n’t thanked you for them, had I? Wear this for me, 
will you not?” She looked up and her long eyes fell — we 
need not assume for the first time — upon the flower in his 
lapel. “I beg your pardon,” she said, with the slightest 
change of expression and voice. “ I see that you are already 
provided. Shall we not go up?” 

Laughing, he plucked a red, red rose from his button-hole 
and jammed it carelessly in his pocket. 

“Give it to me.” 

“Why, it’s of no consequence. Flowers quickly fade.” 

“Won’t you understand? . . . you maddening lady. 
I’ve known all these girls since they were born. When 
they offer me flowers, shall I hurt their feelings and refuse? 
Give it to me.” 

She shook her head slowly. 

“Don’t you know that I’ll prize it — and why?” said 
he in a low voice. “Give it to me.” 

Their eyes met; hers fluttered down; but she raised them 
suddenly and put the flower in his buttonhole, her face so 
close that he felt her breath on his cheek. 


QUEED in 

Beside him at supper, she took up the thread of their 
earlier talk. 

“If you must give up your business, why should n’t it 
be for something bigger than the college — public life for 
instance?” 

“ I may say,” West answered her, “ that as yet there 
has not been that sturdy demand from the public, that up- 
roarious insistence from the honest voter ...” 

“At dinner the other evening I met one of your fine old 
patriarchs, Colonel Cowles. He told us that the new Mayor 
of this city, if he was at all the right sort, would go from 
the City Hall to the Governorship. And do you know who 
represents his idea of the right sort of Mayor?” 

West, picking at a bit of duck, said that he had n’t the 
least idea. 

“So modest — so modest! He said that the city needed 
a young progressive man of the better class and the highest 
character, and that man was — you. No other, by your 
leave ! The Mayoralty, the Governorship, the Senate wait- 
ing behind that, perhaps — who knows? Is it wise to bottle 
one’s self up in the blind alley of the college?” 

Thus Delilah: to which Samson replied that a modern 
college is by no means a blind alley; that from the presi- 
dential retreat he would keep a close eye upon the march 
of affairs, doubtless doing his share toward moulding public 
opinion through contributions to the Post and the reviews: 
that, in fact, public life had long had an appeal for him, and 
that if at any time a cry arose in the land for him to come 
forward . . . 

“ For a public career,” said Delilah, with a sigh, “ I should 
think you had far rather be editor of the Post , for example,, 
than head of this college.” 

Samson made an engaging reply that had to do with 
Colonel Cowles. The talk ran off into other channels, but 
somehow Delilah’s remark stuck in the young man’s head. 

Soul is not all that flows at the Thursday German, and 
it has frequently been noticed that the dance becomes 


1 12 QUEED 

gayest after supper. But it becomes, too, sadly brief, and 
Home Sweet Home falls all too soon upon the enthralled ear. 
Now began the movement toward that place, be it never so 
humble, like which there is none; and amid the throng 
gathered in the vestibule before the cloak-rooms, West 
again found himself face to face with Miss Weyland with 
whom he had stepped many a measure that evening. 

“I’ve been thinking about it lots, President West,” said 
she; “it grows better all the time. Won’t you please teach 
all your boys to be very good, and to work hard, and never 
to grow up to make trouble for the State Department of 
Charities.” 

She had on a carriage-robe of light blue, collared and 
edged with white fur, and her arms were as full of red roses 
as arms could be. 

“But if I do that too well,” said he, “what would become 
of .you? Blaines College shall never blot out the Depart- 
ment of Charities. I nearly forgot a bit of news. Gloomy 
news. The Post is going to fire your little Doctor.” 

“Ah — no!" 

“It* looks that way. The directors will take it up defin- 
itely in April. Colonel Cowles is going to recommend it. 
He says the Doc has more learning than society requires.” 

“But don’t you think his articles give a — a tone to the 
paper — and — ?” 

“I do; a sombre, awful, majestic tone, if you like, but 
still one that ought to be worth something.” 

Sharlee looked sad, and it was one of her best looks. 

“Ah, me! I don’t know what will become of him if he is 
turned adrift. Could you, could you do anything?” 

“I can, and will,” said he agreeably. “ I think the man ’s 
valuable, and you may count on it that I shall use my 
influence to have him kept.” 

So the Star and the Planet again fought in their courses 
for Mr. Queed. West, gazing down at her, overcoat on arm, 
looked like a Planet who usually had his way. The Star, too, 
had strong inclinations in the same direction. For example, 


QUEED 1 13 

she had noted at supper the lily-of-the-valley in the Plan- 
et’s buttonhole, and she had not been able to see any good 
reason for that. 

Her eyes became dreamy. “How shall I say thank you? 
... I know. I must give you one of my pretty flowers 
for your buttonhole.” She began pulling out one of the 
glorious roses, but suddenly checked herself and gazed off 
pensively into space, a finger at her lip. “Ah! I thought this 
gesture seemed strangely familiar, and now I remember. 
I gave him a flower once before, and ah, look! . . . the 
president of the college has tossed it away.” 

West glanced hastily down at his [buttonhole. The 
lily-of-the-valley was gone; he had no idea where he had 
lost it, nor could he now stay to inquire. The rose he took 
with tender carefulness from the upper^pocket of his waist- 
coat. 

“What did Mademoiselle expect?” said he, with a courtly 
bow. “The president wears it over his heart.” 

Sharlee’s smile was a coronation for a man. 

“That one was for the president. This new one,” said she, 
plucking it out, “is for the director and — the man.” 

This new one, after all, she put into his buttonhole with 
her own hands, while he held her great bunch of them. 
As she turned away from the dainty ceremony, her color 
faintly heightened, Sharlee looked straight into the narrow 
eyes of Miss Avery, who, talking with a little knot of men 
some distance away, had been watching her closely. The 
two girls smiled and bowed to each other with extraordinary 
sweetness. 


/ 


X 

Of Fid on Friendship, and who would he sorry if Queed died; 
of Queed' s Mad Impulse , sternly overcome ; of his Indig- 
nant Call upon Nicolovius, the Old Professor. 


C OULD I interrupt you for just a minute, Mr. 
Queed?” 

“No. It is not time yet.” 

“Cicero’s so horrid to-night.” 

“Don’t scatter your difficulties, as I’ve told you before. 
Gather them all together and have them ready to present 
to me at the proper time. I shall make the usual pause,” 
said Mr. Queed, “at nine sharp.” 

Fifi, after all, had been selfish enough to take the little 
Doctor at his word. He had both given her the freedom of 
his dining-room and ordered her to bring her difficulties to 
him, instead of sitting there and noisily crying over them. 
And she had done his bidding, night after night. For his 
part he had stuck manfully by his moment of reckless gen- 
erosity, no matter how much he may have regretted it« 
He helped Fifi, upon her request, without spoken protest o£ 
censure. But he insisted on doing it after an ironclad sched- 
ule: Absolute silence until nine o’clock; then an interlude 
for the solving of difficulties; absolute silence after that; 
then at 9.45 a second interlude for the solving of the last 
difficulties of the night. The old rule of the dining-room, 
the Silence sign, had been necessarily suspended, but the 
young man enforced his schedule of hours far more strictly 
than the average railroad. 

“Nine o’clock,” he announced presently. “ Bring me your 
difficulties.” 

Fifi’s brain was at low ebb to-night. She came around 


QUEED 1 15 

with several books, and he jabbed his pencil at her open 
Cicero with some contempt. 

“You have a fundamental lack of acquaintance with 
Latin grammar, Miss — Miss Fifi. You badly need — ” 

“Why don’t you call me Fifi, Mr. Queed? That's what 
all my friends call me.” 

He stared at her startled; she thought his eyes looked 
almost terrified. “My dear young lady! I'm not your 
friend.” 

A rare color sprang into Fifi’s pallid cheeks: “I — I 
thought you liked me — from your being so good about 
helping me with my lessons — and everything.” 

Queed cleared his throat. “I do like you — in a way. 
Yes — in that way — I like you very well. I will call you 
F — Fifi, if you wish. But — friends! Oh, no! They take 
up more time than such a man as I can afford.” 

“ I don’t think I would take up one bit more time as your 
friend than I do now,” said Fifi, in a plaintive voice. 

Queed, uncomfortably aware of the flying minutes, felt 
like saying that that was impossible. 

“Oh, I know what I’m talking about, I assure you,” said 
the possessor of two friends in New York. “I have threshed 
the whole question out in a practical way.” 

“Suppose,” said Fifi, “your book came out and you were 
very famous, but all alone in the world, without a friend. 
And you died and there was not one single person to cry and 
miss you — would you think that was a — a successful life?” 

“Oh, I suppose so! Yes, yes!” 

“But don’t — don’t you want to have people like you and 
be your friend?” 

“My dear young lady, it is not a question of what I want. 
I was not put here in the world to frivol through a life of 
gross pleasure. I have serious work to do in the service of 
humankind, and I can do it only by rigid concentration and 
ruthless elimination of the unessential. Surely you can 
grasp that?” 

“But — if you died to-morrow,” said Fifi, fearfully fasci- 


n6 QUEED 

nated by this aspect of the young man’s majestic isolation, 
— “ don’t you know of anybody who’d be really and truly 
sorry?” 

“ Really, I’ve never thought of it, but doubtless my two 
friends in New York would be sorry after their fashion. 
They, I believe, are all.” 

‘‘No they are n’t! There’s somebody else!” 

Queed supposed she was going to say God, but he duti- 
fully inquired, “Who?” 

Fifi looked decidedly disappointed. “I thought you 
knew,” she said, gazing at him with childlike directness. 
“Me.” 

Queed’s eyes fell. There was a brief silence. The young 
man became aware of a curious sensation in his chest which 
he did not understand in the least, but which he was not 
prepared to describe as objectionable. To pass over it, and 
to bring the conversation to an immediate close, he rapped 
the open book austerely with his pencil. 

“We must proceed with the difficulties. Let me hear you 
try the passage. Come! Quam ob rem, Quirites . ...” 

The nine o’clock difficulties proceeded with, and duly 
cleared up, Fifi did not stay for the second, or 9.45, inter- 
lude. She closed M. T. Ciceronis Orationes Selectae, 
gathered together her other paraphernalia, and then she 
said suddenly: — 

“I may leave school next week, Mr. Queed. I — don’t 
think I’m going to graduate.” 

He looked up, surprised and displeased. “Why on earth 
do you think that?” 

“Well, you see, they don’t think I’m strong enough to 
keep up the work right now. The Doctor was here to-day, 
and that’s what he says. It’s silly, I think — I know I am.” 

Queed was playing the devil’s tattoo with his pencil, 
scowling somewhat nervously. “ Did you want to graduate 
particularly?” 

A look of exquisite wistfulness swept the child’s face, and 
was gone. “Yes, I wanted to' — lots. But I won’t mind so 


QUEED up 

much after I ’ve had time to get used to it. You know the 
way people are.” 

There was a silence, during which the young man wrestled 
with the sudden mad idea of offering to help Fifi with all 
her lessons each night — not merely with the difficulties — 
thus enabling her to keep up with her class with a mini- 
mum of work. Where such an impulse came from he could 
not conjecture. He put it down with a stern hand. Per- 
sonally, he felt, he might be almost willing to make this 
splendid display of altruism; but for the sake of posterity 
and the common good, he could not dream of stealing so 
much time from the Magnum Opus. 

“Well!” he said rather testily. “That is too bad.” 

“ I know you ’ll be glad not to have me bothering you any 
more with my lessons, and all.” 

“I will not say that.” 

He looked at Fifi closely, examined her face in a search- 
ing, personal manner, which he had probably never before 
employed in reviewing a human countenance. 

“You don’t look well — no, not in the least. You are not 
well. You are a sick girl, and you ought to be in bed at this 
moment.” 

Fifi colored with pleasure. “No,” she said, “I am not 
well.” 

Indeed Fifi was not well. Her cheek spoke of the three 
pounds she had lost since he had first helped her with her 
difficulties, and the eleven pounds before that. The hand 
upon the Turkey-red cloth was of such transparent thinness 
that you were sure you could see the lamplight shining 
through. Her eyes were startling, they were so full of other- 
worldly sweetness and so ringed beneath with shadows. 

“And if I stopped coming down here to work nights,” 
queried Fifi shamelessly, “would you — miss me?” 

“Miss you?” 

“You wouldn’t — you wouldn’t! You’d only be glad 
not to have me around — ” 

“I can truthfully say,” said the little Doctor, glancing at 


n8 QUEED 

his watch, “that I am sorry you are prevented from gradu- 
ating/’ 

Fifi retired in a fit of coughing. She and her cough had 
played fast and loose with Queed’s great work that evening, 
and, moreover, it took him a minute and a half to get her out 
of his mind after she had gone. Not long afterwards, he 
discovered that the yellow sheet he wrote upon was the last 
of his pad. That meant that he must count out time to go 
upstairs and get another one. 

Count out time ! Why, that was what his whole life had 
come down to now ! What was it but a steady counting out 
of ever more and more time? 

The thirty days of hours ceded to Klinker were up, and 
instead of at once bringing the prodigal experiment to a 
close, Doctor Queed found himself terribly tempted to listen 
to his trainer’s entreaties and extend by fifty, per centum the 
time allotted to the gymnasium and open-air pedestrianism. 
He could not avoid the knowledge that he felt decidedly 
better since he had begun the exercises, especially during 
these last few days. For a week “ the ” headache and he had 
been strangers. Much more important, he was con- 
scious of bringing to his work, not indeed a livelier interest, 
for that would have been impossible, but an increasing 
vitality and an enlarged capacity. He kept the most careful 
sort of tabs upon himself, and his records seemed to show, at 
least for the past week or two, that his net volume of work 
had not been seriously lowered by the hour per day wrung 
from the Schedule. The exercises, then, seemed to be paying 
their own freight. And besides all this, they were clearly 
little mile-stones on the path which led men to physical 
competency and the ability to protect their articles from 
public affront. 

Still, an hour out was an hour out — three hundred 
and sixty-five hours a year — three months’ delay in 
finishing his book. Making allowance for increased pro- 
ductivity, a month and a half’s delay. And that was 
only a beginning. The Post — Klinker’s Exercises for All 


QUEED 1 19 

Parts of the Body — Klinker himself, who called frequently 
— now Fifi (eighteen minutes this very evening) — who 
could say where the mad dissipation would end ? On some un- 
charted isle in the far South Seas, perchance, a man might 
be let alone to do his work. But in this boarding-house, it 
was clear now, the effort was foredoomed and hopeless. 
Once make the smallest concession to the infernal ubiquity 
of the race, once let the topmost bar of your gate down 
never so little, and the whole accursed public descended 
with a whoop to romp all over the premises. What, oh, 
what was the use of trying? . . . 

“Ah, Mr. Queed — we'll met! Won’t you stop in and see 
me a little while? You’re enormously busy, I know — but 
possibly I can find something to interest you in my poor 
little collection of books.” 

Nicolovius, coming up the stairs, had met Queed coming 
down, pad in hand. The impertinence of the old professor’s 
invitation fitted superbly with the bitterness of the little 
Doctor’s humor. It pressed the martyr’s crown upon his 
brow till the perfectness of his grudge against a hateful 
world lacked nor jot nor tittle. 

“Oh, certainly! Certainly!” he replied, with the utmost 
indignation. 

Nicolovius, bowing courteously, pushed open the door. 

It was known in the boarding-house that the remodeling 
of the Second Hall Back into a private bathroom for Nico- 
lovius had been done at his own expense, and rumor had it 
that for his two rooms — his “suite,” as Mrs. Paynter 
called it — he paid down the sum of eighteen dollars 
weekly. The bed-sitting-room into which he now ushered 
his guest was the prettiest room ever seen by Mr. Queed, 
who had seen few pretty rooms in his life. Certainly it was 
a charming room of a usual enough type: lamplit and soft- 
carpeted ; brass fittings about the fireplace where a coal fire 
glowed ; a large red reading-table with the customary litter 
of books and periodicals; comfortable chairs to sit in; two 
uncommonly pretty mahogany bookcases with quaint 


120 QUEED 

leaded windows. The crude central identity about all bed- 
rooms that had hitherto come within Queed’s ken, to wit, 
the bed, seemed in this remarkable room to be wanting 
altogether. For how was he, with his practical inexperience, 
to know that the handsome leather lounge in the bay- 
window had its in’ards crammed full of sheets, and blankets, 
and hinges and collapsible legs? 

The young man gravitated instinctively toward the book- 
cases. His expert eye swept over the titles, and his gloom 
lightened a little. 

“You have some fair light reading here, I see,” -he said, 
plucking out a richly bound volume of Lecky’s History of 
European Morals. 

Nicolovius, who was observing him closely, smiled to 
himself. “Ah, yes. I ’m the merest dilettante, without your 
happiness of being a specialist of authority.” 

The old professor was a tall man, though somewhat 
stooped and shrunken, and his head was as bare of hair as the 
palm of your hand; which of course was why he wore the 
black silk skull cap about the house. On the contrary his 
mustaches were singularly long and luxuriant, they, and the 
short, smart goatee, being of a peculiar deep auburn shade. 
His eyes were dark, brilliant, and slightly sardonic; there 
were yellow pouches under them and deep transverse fur- 
rows on his forehead; his nose, once powerfully aquiline, 
appeared to have been broken cleanly across the middle. 
Taken all in all, he was a figure to be noticed in any com- 
pany. 

He came forward on his rubber heels and stood at his 
guest’s elbow. 

“Your field is science, I believe? This Spencer was bound 
for me years ago, by a clever devil in Pittsburg, of all 
places; Huxley, too. My Darwin is hit and miss. Mill is 
here; Hume; the American John Fiske. By chance I have 
The Wealth of Nations. Here is a fine old book, Sir Henry 
Maine’s Ancient Law. You know it, of course?” 

“All — all! I know them all,” murmured the little 


QUEED 12 1 

Doctor, standing with two books under his arm and plucking 
out a third. “I look back sometimes and stand amazed 
at the immensity of my reading. Benjamin Kidd — ha! 
He won’t be in so many libraries when I get through with 
him. You are rather strong on political economy, I see. 
Alfred Marshall does very well. Nothing much in philoso- 
phy. The Contrat Social — absurd.” 

“Do you care for these? ’’asked Nicolovius, pointing to a 
row of well-worn works of Bible criticism. “Of course the 
Germans are far in the lead in this field, and I am unhap- 
pily compelled to rely on translations. Still I have — ” 

“Here! Look here! I must have this! I must take this 
book from you!” interrupted Queed, rather excitedly drag- 
ging a fat blue volume from a lower shelf. “Crozier’s 
Civilization and Progress. What a find! I need it badly. 
I ’ll just take it with me now, shall I not? Eh?” 

“I shall be only too happy to have you take it,” said 
Nicolovius, blandly, “and as many others as you care for.” 

“ I ’ll have another look and see,” said Queed. “My copy 
of Crozier disappeared some time before I left New York, 
and so far I have been unable to replace it. I am showing 
him up completely. . . . Why, this is singular — extraor- 
dinary ! There ’s not a history among all these books — not 
a volume!” 

Nicolovius’s expression oddly changed; his whole face 
seemed to tighten. “No,” he said slowly, “I have some 
reason to dislike history.” 

The young man straightened sharply, horrified. “Why 
don’t you say at once that you hate Life — Man — the 
Evolution of the Race — and be done with it?” 

“Would that seem so dreadful to you?” The old man’s 
face wore a sad smile. “ I might say even that, I fear. Try 
one of those chairs by the fire. I shall not mind telling you 
how I came by this feeling. You don’t smoke, I believe! 
You miss a good deal, but since you don’t know it, how does 
it matter?” 

Nicolovius’s haughty aloofness, his rigid uncommunica- 


122 QUEED 

tiveness, his grand ducal bearing and the fact that he paid 
eighteen dollars a week for a suite had of course made him 
a man of mark and mystery in the boarding-house, and in 
the romancings of Miss Miller he had figured as nearly 
everything from a fugitive crown prince to a retired counter- 
feiter. However, Queed positively refused to be drawn away 
from the book-shelves to listen to his story, and the old 
professor was compelled to turn away from the fire and to 
talk, at that, to the back of the young man’s head. 

Nicolovius, so he told Queed, was not an American at all, 
but an Irishman, born at Roscommon, Connaught. His 
grandfather was a German, whence he got his name. But 
the lad grew up in the image of his mother’s people. He 
became an intense patriot even for Ireland, an extremist 
among extremists, a notorious firebrand in a land where no 
wood glows dully. Equipped with a good education and 
natural parts, he had become a passionate leader in the 
“Young Ireland” movement; was a storm-centre all during 
the Home Rule agitations; and suddenly outgrew Ireland 
overnight during the “Parnellism and Crime” era. He got 
away to the coast, disguised as a coster, and once had the 
pleasure of giving a lift in his cart to the search-party who 
wanted him, dead or alive. This was in the year 1882. 

“You were mixed up in the Phoenix Park murders, I 
daresay?” interjected Queed, in his matter-of-fact way. 

“You will excuse my preference for a certain indefinite- 
ness,” said Nicolovius, with great sweetness. 

On this side, he had drifted accidentally into school-teach- 
ing, as a means of livelihood, and stuck at it, in New York, 
St. Paul, and, for many years, in Chicago. The need of a 
warmer climate for his health’s sake, he said, had driven 
him South, and some three years before an appointment at 
Milner’s Collegiate School had brought him to the city 
which he and the young man now alike called their own. 

Queed, still sacking the shelves for another find, asked if 
he had never revisited Ireland. 

“Ah, no,” said Nicolovius, “there was no gracious par- 


QUBED 123 

don for my little peccadillo, no statute of limitations to 
run after me and pat me on the head. I love England best 
with the sea between us. You may fancy that a refugee 
Irishman has no fondness for reading history.” 

He flicked the fire-ash from his cigar and looked at Queed. 
All the time he talked he had been watching the young man, 
studying him, conning him over. . . . 

“My life ended when I was scarcely older than you. I 
have been dead while I was alive. . . . God pity you, 
young man, if you ever taste the bitter misery of that!” 

Queed turned around surprised at the sudden fierceness 
of the other’s tone. Nicolovius instantly sprang up and 
went over to poke the fire; he came back directly, smiling 
easily and pulling at his long cigar. 

“Ah, well! Forgive the saddening reminiscences of an old 
.nan — not a common weakness with me, I assure you. 
tAdcy I say, Mr. Queed, how much your intellect, your cul- 
ture, your admirable — ah — poise — amazing they seem 
to me in so young a man — have appealed to me among a 
population of Brookes, Bylashes, and Klinkers? You are 
the first man in many a day that has inspired me with an 
impulse toward friendship and confidence. It would be a 
real kindness if you ’d come in sometimes of an evening.” 

At the word “friendship” the young man flinched uncon- 
trollably. Was the whole diabolical world in league to 
spring out and make friends with him? 

“Unfortunately,” he said, with his iciest bow, “my time 
is entirely engrossed by my work.” 

But as his eye went round the pretty, dim-lit room, he 
could not help contrasting it with the bleak Scriptorium 
above, and he added with a change of tone and a sigh: — 

“ You appear wonderfully comfortable here.” 

Nicolovius shrugged. “So-so,” he said indifferently. 
'‘However, I shall make a move before long.” 

“Indeed?” 

“I want more space and independence, more quiet — 
surcease from meeting fellow-boarders at every step. I 


124 QUEED 

plan to move into an apartment, or perhaps a modest little 
house, if I can manage it. For I am not rich, unhappily, 
though I believe the boarders think I am, because I make 
Emma a present of a dollar each year at the anniversary 
of the birth of our Lord.” 

Queed ignored his little pleasantry. He was struck with 
the fact that Nicolovius had described exactly the sort 
of living arrangement that he himself most earnestly de- 
sired. 

“I should have made the move last year,” continued 
Nicolovius, pulling at his auburn mustaches, “except that 
— well, I am more sensitive to my loneliness as I grow older, 
and the fact was that I lacked a congenial companion to share 
a pleasanter home with.” 

The eyes of the two men met, and they moved away from 
each other as by common consent. Apparently the same 
thought popped simultaneously into both their minds. 
Queed dallied with his thought, frankly and with the purest 
unaltruism. 

Though this was the first time he had ever been in the 
old professor’s pretty room, it was the third or fourth time 
he had been invited there. Nothing could be clearer than 
that Nicolovius liked him enormously, — where on earth 
did he get his fatal gift for attracting people? — nothing 
than that he was exactly the sort of congenial companion 
the old man desired. Why should n’t he go and live with 
Nicolovius in his new home, the home of perfect quiet and 
immunity from boarders? And unbroken leisure, too, for 
of course Nicolovius would bear all expenses, and he him- 
self would fly from all remunerative work as from the Black 
Death. Nay more, the old chap would very likely be willing 
to pay him a salary for his society, or at least, see that he 
was kept well supplied with everything he needed — books 
to demolish like this one under his arm, and . . . 

He looked up and found the sardonic Italian eyes of the 
old professor fixed on him with a most curious expression. 
• . . No, no! Better even Mrs. Paynter’s than solitude 


QUEED 125 

shared with this stagey old man, with his repellent face and 
his purring voice which his eyes so belied. 

“I must be going,” said Queed hastily. 

His host came forward with suave expressions of regret. 
“However, I feel much complimented that you came at all. 
Pray honor me again very soon — ” 

“I’ll return this book sometime,” continued the young 
man, already at the door. “You won’t mind if I mark it, of 
course?” 

“My dear sir — most certainly not. Indeed I hoped that 
you would consent to accept it for your own, as a — ” 

“No, I’ll return it. I daresay you will find,” he added 
with a faint smile, but his grossest one, “that my notes have 
not lessened its value exactly!” 

In the hall Queed looked at his watch; ten minutes to ten. 
Twenty-five minutes to his visit upon the old professor! 

However, let us be calm and just about it. The twenty- 
five minutes was not a flat loss : he had got Crozier by it. 
Crozier was worth twenty-five minutes; thirty-five, if it 
came to that — fifty! . . . But how to fit such a thing as 
this into the Schedule — and Klinker’s visits — and the 
time he had given to Fifi to-night and very likely would have 
to give through an endless chain of to-morrows? Here was 
the burning crux. Was it endurable that the Schedule must 
be corrupted yet again? 

So far as little Fifi was concerned, it turned out that these 
agonies were superfluous ; he had helped her with her lessons 
for the last time. She did not appear in the dining-room 
the next night, or the next, or the next. Inquiries from the 
boarders drew from Mrs. Paynter the information that the 
child’s cough had pulled her down so that she had been 
remanded to bed for a day or two to rest up. But resting 
up appeared . not to prove so simple a process as had been 
anticipated, and the day or two was soon running into 
weeks. 

Halcyon nights Queed enjoyed in the dining-room in 
Fifi’s absence, yet faintly marred in a most singular way 


126 QUEED 

by the very absence which alone made them halcyon. It is 
a fact that you cannot give to any person fifteen minutes of 
valuable time every night, and not have your consciousness 
somewhat involved in that person’s abrupt disappearance 
from your horizon. Messages from Fifi on matters of most 
trivial import came to Queed occasionally, and these served 
to keep alive his subtle awareness of her absence. But he 
never took any notice of the messages, not even of the one 
which said that he could look in and see her some afternoon 
if he wanted to. 


XI 

Concerning a Plan to make a Small Gift to a Fellow-Boarder , 
and what it led to in the Way of Calls; also touching upon 
Mr. Queed' s Dismissal from the Post , and the Generous 
Resolve of the Young Lady , Charles Weyland. 

T HE State Department of Charities was a rudiment- 
ary affair in those days, just as Queed had said. 
Its appropriation was impossibly meager, even with 
the niggard’s increase just wrung from the legislature. The 
whole Department fitted cozily into a single room in the 
Capitol; it was small as a South American army, this 
Department, consisting, indeed, of but the two generals. 
But the Secretary and the Assistant Secretary worked 
together like a team of horses. They had already done 
wonders, and their hopes were high with still more wonders 
to perform. In especial there was the reformatory. The 
legislature had adjourned without paying any attention 
to the reformatory, exactly as it had been meant to do. 
But a bill had been introduced, at all events, and the Post 
had carried a second editorial, expounding and urging the 
plan; several papers in the smaller cities of the State had 
followed the Post's lead ; and thus the issue had been fairly 
launched, with the ground well broken for a successful cam- 
paign two years later. 

The office of the Department was a ship-shape place, with 
its two desks, a big one and a little one; the typewriter 
table ; the rows and rows of letter-files on shelves ; a sectional 
bookcase containing Charities reports from other States, with 
two shelves reserved for authoritative books by such writers 
as Willoughby, Smathers, and Conant. Here, doubtless, 
would some day stand the colossal work of Queed. At the 
big desk sat the Rev. Mr. Dayne, a practical idealist of no 


128 QUEED 

common sort, a kind-faced man with a crisp brown mustache*. 
At the typewriter-table sat Sharlee Weyland, writing firm 
letters to thirty-one county almshouse keepers. It was hard 
upon noon. Sharlee looked tired and sad about the eyes. 
She had not been to supper at Mrs. Paynter’s for months, 
but she went there nearly every afternoon from the office 
to see Fifi, who had been in bed for four weeks. 

The Department door opened, with no premonitory 
knock, and in walked, of all people, Mr. Queed. 

Sharlee came forward very cordially to greet the visitor, 
and at once presented him to the Secretary. However Queed 
dismissed Mr. Dayne very easily, and gazing at Sharlee 
sharply through his spectacles, said: 

“I should like to speak to you in private a moment.” 

“Certainly,” said Sharlee. 

“I’ll step into the hall,” said kind-faced Mr. Dayne. 

“No, no. Indeed you must n’t. We will.” 

Sharlee faced the young man in the sunlit hall with sym- 
pathetic expectancy and some curiosity in her eyes. 

“There is,” he began without preliminaries, “a girl at the 
house where I board, who has been confined to her bed with 
sickness for some weeks. It appears that she has grown thin 
and weak, so that they will not permit her to graduate at 
her school. This involves a considerable disappointment to 
her.” 

“You are speaking of Fifi,” said Sharlee, gently. 

“That is the girl’s name, if it is of any interest to you — ” 

“You know she is my first cousin.” 

“Possibly so,” he replied, as though to say that no one 
had the smallest right to hold him responsible for that. “ In 
this connection, a small point has arisen upon which advice 
is required, the advice of a woman. You happen to be the 
only other girl I know. This,” said Queed, “is why I have 
called.” 

Sharlee felt flattered. “You are most welcome to my 
advice, Mr. Queed.” 

He frowned at her through glasses that looked as big and 


QUEED 129 

as round as butter-saucers, with an expression in which 
impatience contended with faint embarrassment. 

“As her fellow-lodger,” he resumed, precisely, “I have 
been in the habit of assisting this girl with her studies and 
have thus come to take an interest in her — a small interest. 
During her sickness, it seems, many of the boarders have 
been in to call upon her. In a similar way, she has sent me 
several messages inviting me to call, but I have not been in 
position to accept any of these invitations. It does not follow 
that, because I gave some of my time in the past to assisting 
her with her lessons, I can afford to give more of it now for 
purposes of — of mere sociability. I make the situation clear 
to you?” 

Sharlee, to whom Fifi had long since made the situation 
clear, puckered her brow like one carefully rehearsing the 
several facts. “Yes, I believe that is all perfectly clear, Mr. 
Queed.” 

He hesitated visibly; then his lips tightened and, gazing 
at her with a touch of something like defiance, he said: “On 
the other hand, I do not wish this girl to think that I bear 
her ill-will for the time I have given her in the past. I — 
ahem — have therefore concluded to make her a present, a 
small gift.” 

Sharlee stood looking at him without a reply. 

“Well?” said he, annoyed. “Iam not certain what form 
this small gift had best take.” 

She turned away from him and walked to the end of the 
hall, where the window was. To Queed’s great perplexity, 
she stood there looking out for some time, her back toward 
him. Soon it came into his mind that she meant to indicate 
that their interview was over, and this attitude seemed ex- 
tremely strange to him. He could not understand it at all. 

“I fear that you have failed to follow me, after all,” he 
called after her, presently. “This was the point — as to 
what form the gift should take — upon which I wanted a 
woman’s advice.” 

“I understand.” She came back to him slowly, with 


130 QUEED 

bright eyes. “ I know it would please Fifi very much to have 
a gift from you. Had you thought at all, yourself, what you 
would like to give?” 

“Yes,” he said, frowning vaguely, “I examined the shop 
windows as I came down and pretty well decided on some- 
thing. Then at the last minute I was not altogether 
sure.” 

“Yes? Tell me what.” 

“I thought I would give her a pair of silk mitts.” 

Sharlee’s eyes never left his, and her face was very sweet 
and grave. 

“White silk ones,” said he — “or black either, for that 
matter, for the price is the same.” 

“Well,” said she, “why did you select mitts, specially?” 

“What first attracted me to them,” he said simply, “was 
that they came to precisely the sum I had planned to spend : 
seventy- five cents.” 

The little corrugation in Sharlee’s brow showed how care- 
fully she was thinking over the young man’s suggestion 
from all possible points of view. You could easily follow 
her thought by her speaking sequence of expressions. 
Clearly it ran like this: “Mitts — splendid! Just the gift 
fora girl who’s sick in bed. The one point to consider 
is, could any other gift possibly be better? No, surely none. 
. . . Wait a minute, though! Let’s take this thing slowly 
and be absolutely sure we’re right before we go ahead. . . . 
Run over carefully all the things that are ever used as gifts. 
Anything there that is better than mitts? Perhaps, 
after all . . . Mitts . . . Why, look here, is n’t there one 
small objection, one trifling want of the fulness of perfection 
to be raised against the gift of mitts?” 

“There’s this point against mitts,” said Sharlee slowly. 
“Fifi ’s in bed now, and I’m afraid she’s likely to be there 
for some time. Of course she could not wear the mitts in 
bed. She would have to tuck them away in a drawer some- 
where. Don’t you think it might be a good idea to give her 
something that she could enjoy at once — something that 


QUEED 131 

would give her pleasure now and so help to lighten these 
tedious hours while she must be in her room?” 

The mitts were the child of Queed’s own brain. Uncon- 
sciously he had set his heart on them ; but his clock- like mind 
at once grasped the logic of this argument, and he met it 
generously. 

“Your point is well taken. It proves the wisdom of 
getting the advice of a woman on such a matter. Now I had 
thought also of a book — ” 

“I’ll tell you!” cried Sharlee, nearly bowled overby a 
brilliant inspiration. “A great many men that I know make 
it a rule to send flowers to girls that are sick, and — ” 

“Flowers!" 

“ It does seem foolish — such a waste, does n’t it? — but 
really you’ve no idea how mad girls are about flowers, or 
how much real joy they can bring into a sick-room. And, by 
changing the water often, and — so on, they last a long time, 
really an incredible time — 

“You recommend flowers, then? Very well,” he said 
resolutely — “that is settled then. Now as to the kind. 
I have only a botanical knowledge of flowers — shall we 
say something in asters, perhaps, chrysanthemums or 
dahlias? What is your advice as to that?” 

“Well, I advise roses.” 

“Roses — good. I had forgotten them for the moment. 
White roses?” 

A little shiver ran through her. “No, no! Let them be 
the reddest you can find.” 

“Next, as to the cost of red roses.” 

“Oh, there’ll be no trouble about that. Simply tell the 
florist that you .want seventy-five cents’ worth, and he will 
give you a fine bunch of them. By the way, I ’d better put 
his name and address down on a piece of paper for you. Be 
sure to go to this one because I know him, and he ’s extremely 
reliable.” 

He took the slip from her, thanked her, bowed gravely, 
and turned to go. A question had risen involuntarily to 


132 QUEED 

the tip of her tongue ; it hung there for a breath, its fate in 
the balance ; and then she released it, casually, when another 
second would have been too late. 

“How is your work on the Post going?” 

He wheeled as though she had struck him, and looked at 
her with a sudden odd hardening of the lower part of his 
face. 

“The Post discharged me this morning.” 

“Oh—” 

It was all that she could say, for she knew it very well. 
She had had it from Colonel Cowles two days before it hap- 
pened, which was three days after the April meeting of the 
directors. Charles Gardiner West, who was to have raised 
his voice in behalf of Mr. Queed on that occasion, happened 
not to be present at all. Having effected the dissolution of 
Semple and West, he had gone to the country for a month’s 
rest, in preparation for that mapping out of collegiate plans 
which was to precede his tour of Europe. Hence the direct- 
ors, hearing no protests from intercessors, unanimously 
bestowed discretion upon the Colonel to replace the tran- 
scendental scientist with a juicier assistant at a larger salary. 

“At least,” the young man qualified, with a curious mix- 
ture of aggressiveness and intense mortification, “the Post 
will discharge me on the 15th day of May unless I show 
marked improvement. I believe that improvement was 
exactly the word the estimable Colonel employed.” 

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Sharlee — “awfully! But after 
all, you want only some routine hack-work — any routine 
hack-work — to establish a little income. It will not be very 
hard to find something else, as good or even better.” 

“You do not appear to grasp the fact that, apart from 
any considerations of that sort, this is an unpleasant, a 
most offensive thing to have happen — ” 

“Oh, but that is just what it isn’t, Mr. Queed,” said 
Sharlee, who quite failed to appreciate his morbid tender- 
ness for even the least of his intellectual offspring. “You 
have taken no pride in the newspaper work; you look down 


QUEED 133 

on it as altogether beneath you. You cannot mind this in 
any personal way — ” 

“I mind it,” said he, “ like the devil.” 

The word fell comically from his lips, but Sharlee, leaning 
against the shut door, looked at him with grave sympathy 
in her eyes. 

“Mr. Queed, if you had tried to write nursery rhymes 
and — failed, would you have taken it to heart?” 

“Never mind arguing it. In fact, I don’t know that I 
could explain it to you in a thoroughly logical and convincing 
way. The central fact, the concrete thing, is that I do object 
most decidedly. I have spent too much time in equipping 
myself to express valuable ideas in discriminating language 
to be kicked out of a second-rate newspaper office like an 
incompetent office-boy. Of course I shall not submit to it.” 

“Do you care to tell me what you mean to do?” 

“Do!” He hit the door-post a sudden blow with an un- 
expectedly large hand. “I shall have myself elected editor 
of the Post .” 

“But — but — but — ” said the girl, taken aback by the 
largeness of this order — “But you don’t expect to oust 
Colonel Cowles?” 

“We are not necessarily speaking of to-morrow or next 
day. An actuary will tell you that I am likely to outlive 
Colonel Cowles. I mean, first, to have my dismissal re- 
called, and, second, to be made regular assistant editor at 
three times my present salary. That is my immediate reply 
to the directors of the Post. I am willing to let the editor- 
ship wait till old Cowles dies.” 

“Tell me,” said Sharlee, “would you personally like to 
be editor of the Post ?” 

“ Like it! I ’ll resign the day after they elect me. Call it 
sheer wounded vanity — anything you like! The name 
makes no difference. I know only that I will have the editor- 
ship for a day — and all for the worthless pleasure of pitch- 
ing it in their faces.” He looked past her out of the window, 
and his light gray eyes filled with an indescribable bitterness. 


134 QUEED 

“And to have the editorship,” he thought out loud, “ I must 
unlearn everything that I know about writing, and delib- 
erately learn to write like a demagogic ass.” 

Sharlee tapped the calcimine with her pointed finger- 
nails. He spoke, as ever, with overweening confidence, but 
she knew that he would never win any editorship in this 
spirit. He was going at the quest with a new burst of intel- 
lectual contempt, though it was this very intellectual con- 
tempt that had led to his downfall. 

“But your own private work?” 

“Don’t speak of it, I beg!” He flinched uncontrollably; 
but of his own accord he added, in carefully repressed tones: 
“To qualify for the editorship of course means — a terrible 
interruption and delay. It means that I must side-track My 
Book for two months or even longer /” 

Two months! It would take him five years and probably 
he would not be qualified then. 

Sharlee hesitated. “Have you fully made up your mind 
to — to be editor?” 

He turned upon her vehemently. “May I ask you never 
to waste my time with questions of that sort. I never — 
never — say anything until I have fully made up my mind 
about it. Good -morning.” 

“No, no, no! Don’t go yet! Please — I want to speak to 
you a minute.” 

He stopped and turned, but did not retrace the three 
steps he had taken. Sharlee leaned against the door and 
looked away from him, out into the park. 

The little Doctor was badly in need of a surgical opera- 
tion. Somebody must perform it for him, or his whole life 
was a dusty waste. That he still had glimmerings, he had 
shown this very hour, in wanting to make a gift to his sick 
little fellow-lodger. His resentment over his dismissal from 
the Post , too, was an unexpectedly human touch in him. 
But in the same breath with these things the young man 
had showed himself at his worst: the glimmerings were so 
Overlaid with an incredible snobbery of the mind, so en- 


QUEED 135 

crusted with the rankest and grossest egotism, that soon 
they must flutter and die out, leaving him stone-blind 
against the sunshine and the morning. No scratch could 
penetrate that Achilles-armor of self-sufficiency. There 
must be a shock to break it apart, or a vicious stabbing to 
cut through it to such spark as was still alive. 

Somebody must administer that shock or do that stab- 
bing. Why not she? He would hate the sight of her for- 
evermore, but . . . 

“Mr. Queed,” said Sharlee, turning toward him, “you 
let me see, from what you are doing this morning, that you 
think of Fifi as your friend. I ’d like to ask if you think of 
me in that way, too.” 

O Lord, Lord! Here was another one! 

“No,” he said positively. “Think of you as I do of Fifi! 
No, no! No, I do not.” 

“I don’t mean to ask if you think of me as you do of 
Fifi. Of course I am sure you don’t. I only mean — let me 
put it this way: Do you believe that I have your — inter- 
ests at heart, and would like to do anything I could to help 
you?” 

He thought this over warily. Doubtless doomed Smathers 
would have smiled to note the slowness with which his great 
rival’s mind threshed out such a question as this. 

“If you state your proposition in that way, I reply, ten- 
tatively, yes.” 

“Then can you spare me half an hour to-night after 
supper?” 

“For what purpose?” 

“ For you and me,” she smiled. “ I ’d like you to come and 
see me, at my house, where we could really have a little 
talk. You see, I know Colonel Cowles very well indeed, and 
I have read the Post for oh, many, many years! In this 
way I know something about the kind of articles people 
here like to read, and about — what is needed to write such 
articles. I think I might make a suggestion or two that — 
would help. Will you come?” 


136 QUEED 

After somewhat too obvious a consideration, Queed con- 
sented. Sharlee thanked him. 

14 I’ll put my address down on the back of that paper, 
shall I? And I think I’ll put my name, too, for I don’t 
believe you have the faintest idea what it is.” 

“Oh, yes. The name is Miss Charlie Weyland. It appears 
that you were named after a boy?” 

“Oh, it’s only a silly nickname. Here’s your little direc- 
tory back. I ’ll be very glad to see you — at half-past eight, 
shall we say? But, Mr. Queed — don’t come unless you feel 
sure that I really want to help. For I ’m afraid I ’ll have to 
say a good deal that will make you very mad.” 

He bowed and walked away. Sharlee went to the tele- 
phone and called Bartlett’s, the florist. She told Mr. Bart- 
lett that a young man would come in there in a few minutes 
— full description of the young man — asking for seventy- 
five cents’ worth of red roses; Mr. Bartlett would please give 
him two dozen roses, and charge the difference to her, Miss 
Weyland ; the entire transaction to be kept discreetly quiet. 

However the transaction was not kept entirely quiet. 
The roses were delivered promptly, and became the chief 
topic of conversation at Mrs. Paynter’s dinner-table. 
Through an enforced remark of Mr. Queed’s, and the later 
discursive gossip of the boarders, it became disseminated 
over the town that Bartlett’s was selling American Beauties 
at thirty-seven and a half cents a dozen, and the poor man 
had to buy ten inches, double column, in the Post next 
morning to get himself straightened out and reestablish 
Bartlett’s familiar quotations. 


XII 

More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift , and of how Mr. 
Queed drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men , and 
how they do; Second Corruption of The Sacred Schedule . 

Q UEED ’S irrational impulse to make Fifi a small gift 
cost him the heart of his morning. A call would have 
been cheaper, after all. Nor was the end yet. In this 
world it never is, where one event invariably hangs by the 
tail of another in ruthless concatenation. Starting out for 
Open-air Pedestrianism at 4.45 that afternoon, the young 
man was waylaid in the hall by Mrs. Paynter, at the very 
door of the big bedroom into which Fifi had long since been 
moved. The landlady, backing Queed against the banis- 
ters, told him how much her daughter had been pleased by 
his beautiful remembrance. The child, she said, wanted 
particularly to thank him herself, and would n’t he please 
come in and see her just a moment? 

As Mrs. Paynter threw oper- the door in the act of making 
the extraordinary request, escape was impossible. Queed 
found himself inside the room before he knew what he was 
doing. As for Mrs. Paynter, she somewhat treacherously 
slipped away to consult with Laura as to what for supper. 

It was a mild sunny afternoon, with a light April wind 
idly kicking at the curtains. Fifi sat over by the open win- 
dow in a tilted-back Morris chair, a sweet-faced little thing, 
all eyes and pallor. From her many covers she extricated a 
fragile hand, frilled with the sleeve of a pretty flowered 
kimono. 

“Look at them! Are n’t they glorious!” 

On a table at her elbow his roses nodded from a wide- 
lipped vase, a gorgeous riot of flame and fragrance. Gaz- 


138 QUEED 

mg at them, the young man marvelled at his own princely 
prodigality. 

“I don’t know how to thank you for them, Mr. Queed* 
They are so, so sweet, and I do love roses so!” 

Indeed her joy in them was too obvious to require any 
words. Queed decided to say nothing about the mitts. 

“I’m glad that they please you,” said he, pulling himself 
together for the ordeal of the call. “Hew are you getting 
along up here? Very well, I trust?” 

“Fine. It’s so quiet and nice. . . . And I don’t mind 
about graduating a bit any more. Is n’t that funny?” 

“You must hurry up and get well and return to the din- 
ing-room again, F — F — - Fifi — , and to the algebra les- 
sons — ” 

“Don’t,” said Fifi. “I can’t bear it.” 

But she whisked at her eyes with a tiny dab of a hand- 
kerchief, and when she looked at him she was smiling, quite 
dear and happy. 

“Have you missed me since I stopped coming?” 

“Missed you?” he echoed, exactly as he had done before. 

But this time Fifi said, shamelessly, “I’ll bet you have! 
— Have n’t you?” 

Come, Mr. Queed, be honest. You are supposed to have 
the scientist’s passion for veracity. You mercilessly demand 
the truth from others. Now take some of your own medi- 
cine. Stand out like a man. Have you or have you not 
missed this girl since she stopped coming? 

“Yes,” said the little Doctor, rather hollowly, “I . . « 
have missed you.” 

Fifi’s smile became simply brazen. “ Do you know what, 
Mr. Queed? You like me lots more than you will say you 
do.” 

The young man averted his eyes. But for some time there 
had been in his mind the subtle consciousness of something 
left undone, an occasion which he had failed to meet with 
the final word of justice. Since he had been in the room, a 
vague, unwelcome resolve had been forming in his mind, 


QUEED 139 

and at Fifi’s bold words, it hardened into final shape. He 
drew a deep breath. 

“You referred to me as your friend once, F — Fifi. And 
I said that I was not.” 

“I know.” 

“ I was — mistaken ” — so he drained his medicine to the 
dregs. “I . . . am your friend.” 

Now the child’s smile was the eternal motherly. “Lor’, 
Mr. Queed, I knew it all the time.” 

Queed looked at the floor. The sight of Fifi affected him 
most curiously to-day. He felt strangely ill at ease with her, 
only the more so because she was so amazingly at home with 
him. She wore her reddish-brown hair not rounded up in 
front as of old, but parted smoothly in the middle, and this 
only emphasized the almost saintly purity of her wasted 
little face. Her buoyant serenity puzzled and disconcerted 
him. 

Meantime Fifi was examining Queed carefully. “You’ve 
been doing something to yourself, Mr. Queed! What is it? 
Why, you look ten times better than even four weeks ago!” 

“I think,” he said drearily, “it must be Klinker’s Exer- 
cises. I give them,” broke from him, “one hour and twenty 
minutes a day /” 

But he pulled himself together, conscientiously deter- 
mined to take the cheery view with Fifi. 

“It is an extraordinary thing, but I am feeling better, 
physically and mentally, than I ever felt before, and this 
though I never had a really sick day in my life. It must be 
the exercises, for that is the only change I have made in my 
habits. Yet I never supposed that exercise had any such 
practical value as that. However,” he went on slowly, “I 
am beginning to believe that there are several things in 
this world that I do not understand.” 

Here, indeed, was a most humiliating, an epoch-making, 
confession to come from the little Doctor. It was accom- 
panied with a vague smile, intended to be cheering and just 
the thing for a sick-room. But the dominant note in this 


140 QUEED 

smile was bewildered and depressed helplessness, and at it 
the maternal instinct sprang full-grown in Fifi’s thin little 
bosom. A passionate wish to mother the little Doctor tugged 
at her heart. 

“You know what you need, Mr. Queed? Friends — lots 
of good friends — ” 

He winced as from a blow. “ I assure you — ” 

“Yes — you — do!” said Fifi, with surprising emphasis 
for so weak a little voice. “ You need first a good girl friend, 
one lots older and better than me — one just like Sharlee. 
O if only you and she would be friends ! — she ’d be the very 
best in the world ! And then you need men friends, plenty of 
them, and to go around with them, and everything. You 
ought to like men more, Mr. Queed! You ought to learn to 
be like them, and — ” 

“Be like them!” he interrupted. “ I am like them. Why,” 
he conceded generously, “I am one of them.” 

Fifi dismissed this with a smile, but he immediately 
added: “ Has it occurred to you that, apart from my greater 
concentration on my work, I am different from other men?” 

“Why, Mr. Queed, you are no more like them than I am! 
You don’t do any of the things they do. You don’t — ” 

“Such as what? Now, Fifi, let us be definite as we go 
along. Suppose that it was my ambition to be, as you say, 
like other men. Just what things, in your opinion, should I 
do?” 

“Well, smoke — that’s one thing that all men do. And 
fool around more with people — laugh and joke, and tell 
funny stories and all. And then you could take an interest 
in your appearance — your clothes, you know; and be 
interested in all sorts of things going on around you, like 
politics and baseball. And go to see girls and take them 
out sometimes, like to the theatre. Some men that are 
popular drink, but of course I don’t care for that.” 

Fifi, of course, had no idea that the little Doctor’s world 
had been shattered to its axis that morning by three min- 
utes’ talk from Colonel Cowles. Therefore, though con- 


QUEED 141 

scious that there never was a man who did not get a certain 
pleasure from talking himself over, she was secretly sur- 
prised at the patience, even the interest, with which he 
listened to her. She would have been still more surprised 
to know that his wonderful memory was nailing down every 
word with machine-like accuracy. 

She expounded her little thesis in considerable detail, and 
at the end he said : — 

“As I’ve told you, Fifi, my first duty is toward my book 
— to give it to the cause of civilization at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. Therefore, the whole question is one of time, 
rather than of deliberate personal inclination. At present 
I literally cannot afford to give time to matters which, while 
doubtless pleasant enough in their fashion — ” 

“That’s what you would have said about the exercise, 
two months ago. And now look, how it ’s helped you ! And 
then, Mr. Queed — are you happy?” 

Surprised and a little amused, he replied: “Really, I’ve 
never stopped to think. I should say, though, that I was 
perfectly content.” 

Fifi laughed and coughed. “There’s a big difference — 
isn’t there? Why, it’s just like the exercise, Mr. Queed. 
Before you began it you were just not sick ; now you are very 
well. That’s the difference between content and happiness. 
Now I,” she ran on, “am very, very happy. I wake up in 
the mornings so glad that I’m alive that sometimes I can 
hardly bear it, and all through the day it ’s like something 
singing away inside of me! Are you like that?” 

No, Mr. Queed must confess that he was not like that. 
Indeed, few looking at his face at this moment would ever 
have suspected him of it. Fifi regarded him with a kind of 
wistful sadness, but he missed the glance, being engaged in 
consulting his great watch; after which he sprang noisily 
to his feet, horrified at himself. 

“Good heavens — it’s ten minutes past five! I must go 
immediately. Why, I’m twenty-five minutes behind My 
Schedule!” 


142 QUEED 

Fifi smiled through her wistfulness. “ Don’t ask me to be 
sorry, Mr. Queed, because I don’t think I can. You see, I 
have n’t taken up a minute of your time for nearly a month, 
so I was entitled to some of it to-day.” 

You see! Hadn’t he figured it exactly right from the 
beginning? Once give a human being a moment of your 
time, as a special and extraordinary kindness, and before 
you can turn around there that being is claiming it whole- 
sale as a matter-of-course right! 

“ It was so sweet of you to send me these flowers, and then 
to come and see me, too. . . . Do you know, it’s been the 
very best day I’ve had since I’ve been sick, and you’ve 
made it so!” 

“It’s all right. Well, good-bye, Fifi.” 

Fifi held out both her tiny hands, and he received them 
because, in the sudden emergency, he could think of no way 
of avoiding them. 

“You’ll remember what I said about friends, and men — 
won’t you, Mr. Queed? Remember it begins with liking 
people, liking everybody. Then when you really like them 
you want to do things for them, and that is happiness.” 

He looked surprised at this definition of happiness, and 
then: “Oh — I see. That’s your religion, is n’t it?” 

“No, it’s just common sense.” 

“I’ll remember. Well, Fifi, good-bye.” 

“Good-bye — and thank you for everything.” 

Into her eyes had sprung a tenderness which he was far 
from understanding. But he did not like the look of it in 
the least, and he extricated his hands from the gentle 
clasp with some abruptness. 

From the safe distance of the door he looked back, and 
wondered why Fifi’s great eyes were fixed so solemnly on 
him. 

“Well — good-bye, again. Hurry up and get well — ” 

“Good-bye — oh, good-bye,” said Fifi, and turned her 
head toward the open window with the blue skies beyond. 

Did Fifi know? How many have vainly tortured themselves 


QUEED 143 

with that question, as they have watched dear ones slipping 
without a word down the slopes to the dark Valley! If this 
child knew that her name had been read out for the greater 
Graduation, she gave no sign. Sometimes in the mornings she 
cried a little, without knowing why. Sometimes she said a 
vague, sad little thing that brought her mother’s heart, 
stone cold, to her mouth. But her talk was mostly very 
bright and hopeful. Ten minutes before Queed came in she 
had been telling Mrs. Paynter about something she would 
do in the fall. If sometimes you would swear that she knew 
there would never be another fall for her, her very next 
remark might confound you. So her little face turned easily 
to the great river with the shining farther shore, and, for 
her part, there would be no sadness of farewell when she 
embarked. 

By marvelous work, Queed closed up the twenty-five 
minutes of time he had bestowed upon Fifi, and pulled into 
supper only three minutes behind running-time. After- 
wards, he sat in the Scriptorium, his face like a carven 
image, the sacred Schedule in his hands. For it had come 
down to that. Either he must at any cost hew his way back 
to the fastness of his early days, or he must corrupt the 
Schedule yet again. 

Every minute that he took away from his book meant 
just that much delay in giving the great work to the world. 
That fact was the eternal backbone of all his consciousness. 
On the other balance of his personal equation, there was 
Buck Klinker and there was Fifi Paynter. 

Klinker evidently felt that all bars were down as to him. 
It would be a hard world indeed if a trainer was denied free 
access to his only pupil, and Klinker, though he had but 
the one, was always in as full blast as Muldoon’s. He had 
acquired a habit of “dropping in” at all hours, especially 
late at night, which, to say the least, was highly wasteful 
of time. It was Queed ’s privilege to tell Klinker that he 
must keep away from the Scriptorium; but in that case 
Klinker might fairly retort that he would no longer give the 


144 QUEED 

Doc free physical culture. Did he care to bring that issue 
to the touch? No, he did not. In fact, he must admit that 
he had a distinct need of Buck, a distinct dependence upon 
him, for awhile yet at any rate. So he could make no elimi- 
nation of the non-essential there. 

Then there was Fifi. In a week, or possibly two weeks, 
Fifi would doubtless reappear in his dining-room, and if she 
had no lessons to trouble him with, she would at any rate 
feel herself free to talk to him whenever the whim moved her. 
Had she not let out this very day that she considered that 
she had a kind of title to his time? So it would be to the 
end of the chapter. It had been his privilege to tell Fifi that 
he could not spare her another minute of time till his work 
was finished. . . . Had been — but no longer was. Look- 
ing back now, he found it impossible to reconstruct the chain 
of impulse and circumstance which had trapped him into 
it, but the stark fact was that his own lips had authorized 
Fifi to profane at will his holy time. Not three hours before 
he had been betrayed into weakly telling her that he was 
her friend. He was a man of truth and honor. He could not 
possibly get back of that confession of friendship, or of the 
privileges it bestowed. So there was no elimination of the 
non-essential he could make there. 

These were the short and ugly facts. And now he must 
take official cognizance of them. 

With a leaden heart and the hands of lamentation, he 
took the Schedule to pieces and laboriously fitted it together 
again with a fire -new item in its midst. The item was 
Human Intercourse, and to it he allotted the sum of thirty 
minutes per diem. 

It was a historic moment in his life, and, unlike most men 
at such partings of the ways, he was fully conscious of it. 
Nevertheless, he passed straight from it to another perform- 
ance hardly less extraordinary. From his table drawer he 
produced a little memorandum book, and in it — just below 
a diagram of a new chest-developing exercise invented last 
night by Klinker — he jotted down the things that Fifi said 
a man must do to be like other men. 


QUEED 145 

A clean half-hour remained before he must go and call 
on the young lady with the tom-boy name, Charles Wey- 
land, who knew “what the public liked.” He spent it, he, 
the indefatigable minute-shaver, sitting with the head that 
no longer ached clamped in his hand. It had been the most 
disturbing day of his life, but he was not thinking of that 
exactly. He was thinking what a mistake it had been to 
leave New York. There he had had but two friends with 
no possibility of getting any more. Here — it was impossi- 
ble to blink the fact any longer — he already had two, with 
at least two more determinedly closing in on him. He had 
Fifi and he had Buck — yes, Buck; the young lady Charles 
Weyland had offered him her friendship this very day; and 
unless he looked alive he would wake up some morning to 
find that Nicolovius also had captured him as a friend. 

He was far better off in New York, where days would go 
by in which he never saw Tim or Murphy Queed. And yet 
. . . did he want to go back? 


XIII 


“ Taking the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two”: as performed 
for the First and Only Time by Sharlee Weyland. 

HE Star that fought in its course for men through 



Sharlee Weyland was of the leal and resolute kind. 


It did not swerve at a squall. Sharlee had thought the 
whole thing out, and made up her mind. Gentle raillery, 
which would do everything necessary in most cases, would 
be wholly futile here. She must doff all gloves and give 
the little Doctor the dressing-down of his life. She must 
explode a mine under that enormously exaggerated self- 
esteem which swamped the young man’s personality like a 
goitre. Sharlee did not want to do this. She liked Mr. Queed, 
in a peculiar sort of way, and yet she had to make it impos- 
sible for him ever to speak to her again. Her nature was to 
give pleasure, and therefore she was going to do her utmost 
to give him pain. She wanted him to like her, and conse- 
quently she was going to insult him past forgiveness. And 
she was not even sure that it was going to do him any good. 

When her guest walked into her little back parlor that 
evening, Sharlee was feeling very self-sacrificing and noble. 
However, she merely looked uncommonly pretty and tre- 
mendously engrossed in herself. She was in evening dress. 1 1 
was Easter Monday, and at nine, as it chanced, she was to go 
out under the escortage of Charles Gardiner West to some 
forgathering of youth and beauty. But her costume was 
so perfectly suited to the little curtain-raiser called Taking 
the Little Doctor Down a Peg or Two, that it might have 
been appointed by a clever stage-manager with that alone 
in mind. She was the haughty beauty, the courted princess, 
graciously bestowing a few minutes from her crowding fetes 


QUEED 147 

upon some fourth-rate dependant. And indeed the little 
Doctor, with his prematurely old face and his shabby clothes, 
rather looked the part of the dependant. Sharlee’s greet- 
ing was of the briefest. 

“ Ah, Mr. Queed. . . . Sit down.” 

Her negligent nod set him away at an immense distance; 
even he was aware that Charles Weyland had undergone 
some subtle but marked change since the morning. The 
colored maid who had shown him in was retained to button 
her mistress’ long gloves. It proved to be a somewhat slow 
process. Over the mantel hung a gilt-framed mirror, as 
wide as the mantel itself. To this mirror, the gloves but- 
toned, Miss Weyland passed, and reviewed her appearance 
with slow attention, giving a pat here, making a minor 
readjustment there. But this survey did not suffice for 
details, it seemed ; a more minute examination was needed ; 
over the floor she trailed with leisurely grace, and rang the 
bell. 

“Oh, Mary — my vanity-box, please. On the dressing- 
table.” 

Seating herself under the lamp, she produced from the 
contrivance the tiniest little mirror ever seen. As she 
raised it to let it perform its dainty function, her glance 
fell on Queed, sitting darkly in his rocking-chair. A look of 
mild surprise came into her eye: not that it was of any con- 
sequence, but plainly she had forgotten that he was there. 

“Oh . . . You don’t mind waiting a few minutes?” 

“I do m— ” 

“You promised half an hour I think? Never fear that 1 
shall take longer — ” 

“ I did not promise half an hour for such — ” 

“It was left to me to decide in what way the time should 
be employed, I believe. What I have to say can be said 
briefly, but to you, at least, it should prove immensely 
interesting.” She stifled a small yawn with the gloved finger- 
tips of her left hand. “ However, of course don’t let me keep 
you if you are pressed for time.” 


148 QUEED 

The young man made no reply. Sharlee completed at her 
leisure her conference with the vanity-box; snapped the 
trinket shut; and, rising, rang the bell again. This time she 
required a glass of water for her good comfort. She drank 
it slowly, watching herself in the mantel mirror as she did 
so, and setting down the glass, took a new survey of her 
whole effect, this time in a long-distance view. 

“Now, Mr. Queed!” 

She sat down in a flowered arm-chair so large that it 
engulfed her, and fixed him with a studious, puckering gaze 
as much as to say : “Let ’s see. Now, what was his trouble? ” 

“Ah, yes ! — the Post.” 

She glanced at the little clock on the mantel, appeared 
to gather in her thoughts from remote and brilliant places, 
and addressed the dingy youth briskly but not unkindly. 

“Unfortunately, I have an engagement this evening and 
can give you very little time. You will not mind if I am 
brief. Here, then, is the case. A man employed in a minor 
position on a newspaper is notified that he is to be discharged 
for incompetence. He replies that, so far from being dis- 
charged, he will be promoted at the end of a month, and 
will eventually be made editor of the paper. Undoubtedly 
this is a magnificent boast, but to make it good means a 
complete transformation in the character of this man’s work 
— namely, from entire incompetence to competence of an 
unusual sort, all within a month’s time. You are the man 
who has made this extraordinary boast. To clear the ground 
before I begin to show you where your trouble is, please tell 
me how you propose to make it good.” 

Not every man feeling inside as the little Doctor felt at 
that moment would have answered with such admirable 
calm. 

“I purpose,” he corrected her, “to take the files of the 
Post for the past few years and read all of Colonel Cowles’s 
amusing articles. He, I am informed, is the editorial mogul 
and paragon. I purpose to study those articles scientifically, 
to analyze them, to take them apart and see exactly how 


QUEED 149 

they are put together. I purpose to destroy my own style 
and build up another one precisely like the Colonel’s — 
if anything, a shade more so. In short I purpose to learn to 
write like an ass, of asses, for asses.” 

“That is your whole programme?” 

“It is more than enough, I think.” 

“Ah?” She paused a moment, looking at him with faint, 
distant amusement. “Now, as my aunt’s business woman, 
I, of course, take an interest in the finances of her boarders. 
Therefore I had better begin at once looking about for a 
new place for you after May 15th. What other kinds of 
work do you think yourself qualified to do, besides editorial 
writing and the preparation of thesauruses?” 

He looked at her darkly. “You imagine that the Post wiP 
discharge me on May 15th?” 

“There is nothing in the world that seems to me so cer- 
tain.” 

“And why?” 

“Why will the Post discharge you? For exactly the same 
reason it promises to discharge you now. Incompetence.” 

“You agree with Colonel Cowles, then? You consider 
me incompetent to write editorials for the Post ?” 

“Oh, totally. And it goes a great deal deeper than style, 
I assure you. Mr. Queed, you’re all wrong from the begin- 
ning.” 

Her eyes left his face; went first to the clock; glancec 
around the room. Sharlee’s dress was blue, and her neck 
was as white as a wave’s foamy tooth. Her manner was 
intended to convey to Mr. Queed that he was the smallest 
midge on all her crowded horizon. It did not, of course, 
have that effect, but it did arrest and pique his attention 
most successfully. It was in his mind that Charles Weyland 
had been of some assistance to him in first suggesting work 
on the Post; and again about the roses for Fifi. He was still 
ready to believe that she might have some profitable sug- 
gestion about his new problem. Was she not that “public” 
and that “average reader” which he himself so despised and 


150 QUEED 

detested? Yet he could not imagine where such a little pink 
and white chit found the hardihood to take this tone with 
one of the foremost scientists of modern times. 

“You interest me. I am totally incompetent now; I will 
be totally incompetent on May 15th; this because I am all 
wrong from the beginning. Pray proceed.” 

Sharlee, her thoughts recalled, made a slight inclination 
of her head. “ Forgive my absent-mindedness. First, then, 
as to why you are a failure as an editorial writer. You are 
quite mistaken in supposing that it is a mere question of 
style, though right in regarding your style as in itself a 
fatal handicap. However, the trouble has its root in your 
amusing attitude of superiority to the work. You think of 
editorial writing as small hack-work, entirely beneath the 
dignity of a man who has had one or two articles accepted 
by a prehistoric magazine which nobody reads. In reality, 
it is one of the greatest and most splendid of all professions, 
fit to call out the very best of a really big man. You chuckle 
and sneer at Colonel Cowles and think yourself vastly his 
superior as an editorial writer, when, in the opinion of 
everybody else, he is in every way your superior. I doubt if 
the Post has a single reader who would not prefer to read 
an article by him, on any subject, to reading an article by 
you. I doubt if there is a paper in the world that would not 
greatly prefer him as an editor to you — ” 

“You are absurdly mistaken,” he interrupted coldly. “I 
might name various papers — ” 

“Yes, the Political Science Quarterly and the Journal of the 
Anthropological Institute .” Sharlee smiled tolerantly, and 
immediately resumed: “When you sit down at the office to 
write an article, whom do you think you are writing for? 
A company of scientists? An institute of gray-bearded 
scholars? An academy of fossilized old doctors of laws? 
There are not a dozen people of that sort who read the Post. 
Has it never occurred to you to call up before your mind’s 
eye the people you actually are writing for? You can see 
them any day as you walk along the street. Go into a street 


QUEED 151 

car at six o’clock any night and look around at the faces. 
There is your public, the readers of the Post — shop-clerks, 
stenographers, factory-hands, office-men, plumbers, team- 
sters, drummers, milliners. Look at them. Have you any- 
thing to say to interest them? Think. If they were to file 
in here now and ask you to make a few remarks, could you, 
for the life of you, say one single thing that would interest 
them?” 

“I do not pretend, or aspire,” said Mr. Queed, “to dis- 
pense frothy nothings tricked out to beguile the tired brick- 
layer. My duty is to give forth valuable information and 
ripened judgment couched in language — ” 

“No, your duty is to get yourself read; if you fail there 
you fail everywhere. Is it possible that you don’t begin to 
grasp that point yet? I fancied that your mind was quicker. 
You appear to think that the duty of a newspaper is to back 
people up against a wall and ram helpful statistics into them 
with a force-pump. You are grotesquely mistaken. Your 
ideal newspaper would not keep a dozen readers in this city: 
that is to say, it would be a complete failure while it lasted 
and would bankrupt Mr. Morgan in six months. A dead 
newspaper is a useless one, the world over. At the same time, 
every living and good newspaper is a little better, spreads 
a little more sweetness and light, gives out a little more 
valuable information, ripened judgment, et cetera, than the 
vast majority of its readers want or will absorb. The Post 
is that sort of newspaper. It is constantly tugging its readers 
a little higher than they — I mean the majority, and not 
the cultured few — are willing to go. But the Post always 
recognizes that its first duty is to get itself read : if it does 
not succeed in that, it lacks the principle of life and dies. 
Perhaps the tired bricklayer you speak of, the middle-class, 
commonplace, average people who make up nearly all of the 
world, ought to be interested in John Stuart Mill’s attitude 
toward the single-tax. But the fact is that they are n’t. 
The Post wisely deals with the condition, and not a theory: 
it means to get itself read. It is your first duty, as a writer 


152 QUEED 

for it, to get yourself read. If you fail to get yourself read, 
you are worse than useless to the Post. Well, you have 
completely failed to do this, and that is why the Post is dis- 
charging you. Come, free yourself from exaggerated notions 
about your own importance and look at this simple point 
with the calm detachment of a scientist. The Post can save 
money, while preserving just the same effect, by discharg- 
ing you and printing every morning a half-column from the 
Encyclopedia Britannica.” 

She rose quickly, as though her time was very precious, 
and passed over to the table, where a great bowl of violets 
stood. The room was pretty: it had reminded Queed, when 
he entered it, of Nicolovius’s room, though there was a 
softer note in it, as the flowers, the work-bag on the table, 
the balled-up veil and gloves on the mantel-shelf. He had 
liked, too, the soft-shaded lamps; the vague resolve had 
come to him to install a lamp in the Scriptorium later on. 
But now, thinking of nothing] like this, he sat in a thick 
silence gazing at her with unwinking sternness. 

Sharlee carefully gathered the violets from the bowl, 
shook a small shower of water from their stems, dried them 
with a pocket handkerchief about the size of a silver dollar. 
Next she wrapped the stems with purple tinfoil, tied them 
with a silken cord and tassel and laid the gorgeous bunch 
upon a magazine back, to await her further pleasure. Then, 
coming back, she resumed her seat facing the shabby young 
man she was assisting to see himself as others saw him. 

“I might,” she said, “simply stop there. I might tell 
you that you are a failure as an editorial writer because you 
have nothing at all to say that is of the smallest interest to 
the great majority of the readers of editorials, and would 
not know how to say it if you had. That would be enough 
to satisfy most men, but I see that I must make things very 
plain and definite for you. Mr. Queed, you are a failure as 
an editorial writer because you are first a failure in a much 
more important direction. You ’re a failure as a human being 
— as a man.’ 


QUEED 153 

She was watching his face lightly, but closely, and so she 
was on her feet as soon as he, and had her hand out before 
he had even thought of making this gesture. 

“It is useless for this harangue to continue,” he said, 
with a brow of storm. “Your conception of helpful ad- 
vice . . 

But Sharlee’s voice, which had begun as soon as his, 
drowned him out. . . . “ Complimented you a little too far, 
I see. I shall be sure to remember after this,” she said with 
such a sweet smile, “ that, after all your talk, you are just the 
average man, and want to hear only what flatters your little 
vanity. Good- night. So nice to have seen you.” 

She nodded brightly, with faint amusement, and turning 
away, moved off toward the door at the back. Queed, of 
course, had no means of knowing that she was thinking, al- 
most jubilantly : “ I knew that mouth meant spirit ! ” He only 
knew that, whereas he had meant to terminate the inter- 
view with a grave yet stinging rebuke to her, she had given 
the effect of terminating the interview with a graceful yet 
stinging rebuke to him. This was not what he wanted in 
the least. Come to think of it, he doubted if he wanted the 
interview to end at all. 

“Miss Weyland . . .” 

She turned on the threshhold of the farther door. “ I beg 
your pardon! I thought you’d gone! Your hat? — I think 
you left it in the hall, did n’t you?” 

“ It is not my hat.” 

“Oh — what is it?” 

“God knows,” said the little Doctor, hoarsely. 

He was standing in the middle of the floor, his hands 
jammed into his trousers pockets, his hair tousled over a 
troubled brow, his breast torn by emotions which were 
entirely new in his experience and which he did n’t even 
know the names of. All the accumulation of his disruptive 
day was upon him. He felt both terrifically upset inside, and 
interested to the degree of physical pain in something or 
other, he had no idea what. Presently he started walking 


154 QUEED 

up and down the rPom, nervous as a caged lion, eyes fixed 
on space or on something within, while Sharlee stood in the 
doorway watching him casually and unsurprised, as though 
just this sort of thing took place in her little parlor regularly, 
seven nights a week. 

“Go ahead! Go ahead!” he broke out abruptly, coming 
to a halt. “Pitch into me. Do it for all you’re worth. I 
suppose you think it’s what I need.” 

“Certainly,” said Sharlee, pleasantly. 

She stood beside her chair again, flushed with a secret 
sense of victory, liking him more for his temper and his con- 
trol than she ever could have liked him for his learning. But 
it was not her idea that the little Doctor had got it any- 
where near hard enough as yet. 

“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Queed?” 

It appeared that Mr. Queed would. 

“I am paying you the extraordinary compliment,” said 
Sharlee, “of talking to you as others might talk about you 
behind your back — in fact, as everybody does talk about 
you behind your back. I do this on the theory that you are 
a serious and honest-minded man, sincerely interested in 
learning the truth about yourself and your failures, so that 
you may correct them. If you are interested only in having 
your vanity fed by flattering fictions, please say so right now. 
I have no time,” she said, hardly able for her life to suppress 
a smile, “for butterflies and triflers.” 

Butterflies and triflers! Mr. Queed, proprietor of the 
famous Schedule, a butterfly and a trifler! 

He said in a muffled voice: “Proceed.” 

“Since an editorial writer,” said Sharlee, seating herself 
and beginning with a paragraph as neat as a public speaker’s, 
“must be able, as his first qualification, to interest the com- 
mon people, it is manifest that he must be interested in 
the common people. He must feel his bond of humanity 
with them, sympathize with them, like them, love them. 
This is the great secret of Colonel Cowles’s success as an 
editor. A fine gentleman by birth, breeding, and tradition, 


QUEED 155 

he is yet always a human being among human beings. All 
his life he has been doing things with and for the people. 
He went all through the war, and you might have thought 
the whole world depended on him, the way he went up 
Cemetery Ridge on the 3rd of July, 1863. He was shot all 
to pieces, but they patched him together, and the next year 
there he was back in the fighting around Petersburg. After 
the war he was a leader against the carpet-baggers, and if 
this State is peaceful and prosperous and comfortable for 
you to live in now, it is because of what men like him and my 
father did a generation ago. When he took the Post he 
went on just the same, working and thinking and fighting 
for men and with men, and all in the service of the people. 
I suppose, of course, his views through all these years have 
not always been sound, but they have always been honest 
and honorable, sensible, manly, and sweet. And they have 
always had a practical relation with the life of the people. 
The result is that he has thousands and thousands of readers 
who feel that their day has been wanting in something 
unless they have read what he has to say. There is Colonel 
Cowles — Does this interest you, Mr. Queed? If not, I 
need not weary us both by continuing.” 

He again requested her, in the briefest possible way, to 
proceed. 

“Well! There is Colonel Cowles, whom you presume to 
despise, because you know, or think you know, more 
political and social science than he does. Where you got 
your preposterously exaggerated idea of the value of text- 
book science I am at a loss to understand. The people you 
aspire to lead — for that is what an editorial writer must do 
— care nothing for it. That tired bricklayer whom you 
dismiss with such contempt of course cares nothing for it. 
But that bricklayer is the People, Mr. Queed. He is the 
very man that Colonel Cowles goes to, and puts his hand 
on his shoulder, and tries to help — help him to a better 
home, better education for his children, more and more 
wholesome pleasures, a higher and happier living. Colonel 


156 QUEED 

Cowles thinks of life as an opportunity to live with and 
serve the common, average, everyday people. You think 
of it as an opportunity to live by yourself and serve your 
own ambition. He writes to the hearts of the people. You 
write to the heads of scientists. Doubtless it will amaze you 
to be told that his paragraph on the death of Moses Page, 
the Byrds’ old negro butler, was a far more useful article 
in every way than your long critique on the currency system 
of Germany which appeared in the same issue. Colonel 
Cowles is a big-hearted human being. You — you are a 
scientific formula. And the worst of it is that you ’ re proud 
of it I The hopeless part of it is that you actually consider 
a few old fossils as bigger than the live people all around 
you! How can I show you your terrible mistake? . . . Why, 
Mr. Queed, the life and example of a little girl ...” she 
stopped, rather precipitately, stared hard at her hands, 
which were folded in her lap, and went resolutely on: “The 
life and example of a little girl like Fifi are worth more than 
all the text-books you will ever write.” 

A silence fell. In the soft lamplight of the pretty room, 
Queed sat still and silent as a marble man; and presently 
Sharlee, plucking herself together, resumed : — 

“Perhaps you now begin to glimpse a wider difference 
between yourself and Colonel Cowles than mere unlikeness 
of literary style. If you continue to think this difference 
all in your own favor, I urge you to abandon any idea of 
writing editorials for the Post. If on the other hand, you 
seriously wish to make good your boast of this morning, I 
urge you to cease sneering at men like Colonel Cowles, and 
humbly begin to try to imitate them. I say that you are a 
failure as an editorial writer because you are a failure as a 
man, and I say that you are a failure as a man because you 
have no relation at all with man’s life. You aspire to teach 
and lead human beings, and you have not the least idea 
what a human being is, and not the slightest wish to find 
out. All around you are men, live men of flesh and blood, 
who are moving the world, and you, whipping out your 


QUEED 157 

infinitesimal measuring-rod, dismiss them as inferior cattle 
who know nothing of text-book science. Here is a real and 
living world, and you roll through it like a billiard-ball. 
And all because you make the fatal error of mistaking a 
sorry handful of mummies for the universe.” 

“It is a curious coincidence,” said Queed, with great but 
deceptive mildness, “that Fifi said much the same thing 
to me, though in quite a different way, this afternoon.” 

“She told me. But Fifi was not the first. You had the 
same advice from your father two months ago.” 

“My father?” 

“You have not forgotten his letter that you showed me 
in your office one afternoon?” 

It seemed that he had ; but he had it in his pocket, as it 
chanced, and dug it out, soiled and frayed from long confine- 
ment. Stooping forward to introduce it into the penumbra 
of lamplight, he read over the detective-story message: 
“ Make friends : mingle with people and learn to like them. 
This is the earnest injunction of Your father .” 

“You complain of your father’s treatment of you,” said 
Sharlee, “but he offered you a liberal education there, and 
you declined to take it.” 

She glanced at the clock, turned about to the table and 
picked up her beautiful bouquet. A pair of long bodkins 
with lavender glass heads were waiting, it appeared; she pro- 
ceeded to pin on her flowers, adjusting them with careful 
attention; and rising, again reviewed herself in the mantel- 
mirror. Then she sat down once more, and calmly said : 

“As you are a failure as an editorial writer and as a man, 
so you are a failure as a sociologist. . . 

It was the last straw, the crowning blasphemy. She 
hardly expected him to endure it, and he did not; she was 
glad to have it so. But the extreme mildness with which 
he interrupted her almost unnerved her, so confidently had 
she braced herself for violence. 

“Do you mind if we omit that? I think I have heard 
enough about my failures for one night.” 


158 QUEED 

He had risen, but stood, for a wonder, irresolute. It was 
too evident that he did not know what to do next. Presently, 
having nowhere else to go, he walked over to the mantel- 
shelf and leant his elbow upon it, staring down at the floor. 
A considerable interval passed, broken only by the ticking of 
the clock before he said: — 

“You may be an authority on editorial writing — even 
on manhood — life. But I can hardly recognize you in that 
capacity as regards sociology.” 

Sharlee made no reply. She had no idea that the young 
man’s dismissal from the Post had been a crucifixion to him, 
an unendurable infamy upon his virginal pride of intellect. 
She had no conception of his powers of self-control, which 
happened to be far greater than her own, and she would 
have given worlds to know what he was thinking at that 
moment. For her part she was thinking of him, intensely, 
and in a personal way. Manners he had none, but where did 
he get his manner? Who had taught him to bow in that 
way? He had mentioned insults: where had he heard of 
insults, this stray who had raised himself in the house of 
a drunken policeman? 

“Well,” said Queed, with the utmost calmness, “you 
might tell me, in a word, why you think I am a failure as a 
sociologist.” 

“You are a failure as a sociologist,” said Sharlee, immedi- 
ately, “for the same reason as both your other failures: you 
are wholly out of relation with real life. Sociology is the 
science of human society. You know absolutely nothing 
about human society, except what other men have found 
out and written down in text-books. You say that you are 
an evolutionary sociologist. Yet a wonderful demonstra- 
tion in social evolution is going on all around you, and you 
don't even know it. You are standing here directly between 
two civilizations. On the one side there are Colonel Cowles 
and my old grandmother — mother of your landlady, 
plucky dear! On the other there are our splendid young 
men, men who, with traditions of leisure and cultured idle- 


QUEED 159 

ness in their blood, have pitched in with their hands and 
heads to make this State hum , and will soon be meeting and 
beating your Northern young men at every turn. On one 
side there is the old slaveholding aristocracy; on the other 
the finest Democracy in the world ; and here and now human 
society is evolving from one thing to the other. A real sociol- 
ogist would be absorbed in watching this marvelous pro- 
cess: social evolution actually surprised in her workshop. 
But you — I doubt if you even knew it was going on. A 
tremendous social drama is being acted out under your 
very window and you yawn and pull down the blind” 

There was a brief silence. In the course of it the door- 
bell was heard to ring ; soon the door opened ; a masculine 
murmur ; then the maid Mary’s voice, clearly : “ Yassuh, she ’s 
in. . . . Won’t you rest your coat, Mr. West?” 

Mary entered the little back parlor, a card upon a tray. 
“Please draw the folding doors,” said Shari ee. “Say that 
I ’ll be in in a few minutes.” 

They were alone once more, she and the little Doctor; 
the silence enfolded them again ; and she broke it by saying 
the last word she had to say. 

“I have gone into detail because I wanted to make the 
unfavorable impression you produce upon your little world 
clear to you, for once. But I can sum up all that I have said 
in less than six words. If you remember anything at all that 
I have said, I wish you would remember this. Mr. Queed, 
you are afflicted with a fatal malady. Your cosmos is all 
Ego.” 

She started to rise, thought better of it, and sat still in her 
flowered chair full in the lamplight. The little Doctor stood 
at the mantel-shelf, his elbow upon it, and the silence 
lengthened. To do something, Sharlee pulled off her right 
long glove and slowly put it back again. Then she pulled 
off her left long glove, and about the time she was buttoning 
the last button he began speaking, in a curious, lifeless 
voice. 

“ I learned to read when I was four years old out of a copy 


160 QUEED 

of the New York Evening Post. It came to the house, I 
remember, distinctly, wrapped around two pork chops. 
That seemed to be all the reading matter we had in the 
house for a long time — I believe Tim was in hard luck in 
those days — and by the time I was six I had read that 
paper all through from beginning to end, five times. I have 
wondered since if that incident did not give a bent to my 
whole mind. If you are familiar with the Evening Post , you 
may appreciate what I mean. ... It came out in me ex- 
actly like a duck’s yearning for water; that deep instinct 
for the printed word. Of course Tim saw that I was different 
from him. He helped me a little in the early stages, and 
then he stood back, awed by my learning, and let me go 
my own gait. When I was about eight, I learned of the 
existence of public libraries. I daresay it would surprise 
you to know the books I was reading in this period of my 
life — and writing too : for in my eleventh year I was the 
author of a one-volume history of the world, besides several 
treatises. And I early began to think, too. What was the 
fundamental principle underlying the evolution of a higher 
and higher human type? How could this principle be uni- 
fied through all branches of science and reduced to an oper- 
able law? Questions such as these kept me awake at night 
while I still wore short trousers. At fourteen I was boarding 
alone in a kind of tenement on the East Side. Of course I 
was quite different from all the people around me. Different. 
I don’t remember that they showed any affectionate inter- 
est in me, and why on earth should they? As I say, I was 
different. There was nothing there to suggest a conception 
of that brotherhood of man you speak of. I was born with 
this impulse for isolation and work, and everything that 
happened to me only emphasized it. I never had a day’s 
schooling in my life, and never a word of advice or admoni- 
tion — never a scolding in all my life till now. Here is a 
point on which your Christian theory of living seems to me 
entirely too vague : how to reconcile individual responsibility 
with the forces of heredity and circumstance. From my point 


QUEED 161 

of view your talk would have been better rounded if you 
had touched on that. Still, it was striking and interesting as 
it was. I like to hear a clear statement of a point of view, and 
that your statement happens to riddle me, personally, of 
course does not affect the question in any way. If I regard 
human society and human life too much as the biologist re- 
gards his rabbit, which appears to be the gist of your criti- 
cism, I can at least cheerfully take my own turn on the ope- 
rating table as occasion requires. There is, of course, a great 
deal that I might say in reply, but I do not understand that 
either of us desires a debate. I will simply assert that your 
fundamental conception of life, while novel and piquant, 
will not hold water for a moment. Your conception is, if I 
state it fairly, that a man’s life, to be useful, to be a life of 
service, must be given immediately to his fellows. He must 
do visible and tangible things with other men. I think a little 
reflection will convince you that, on the contrary, much or 
most of the best work of the world has been done by men 
whose personal lives were not unlike my own. There was 
Palissy, to take a familiar minor instance. Of course his 
neighbors saw in him only a madman whose cosmos was all 
Ego. Yet people are grateful to Palissy to-day, and think 
little of the suffering of his wife and children. Newton was no 
genial leader of the people. Bacon could not even be loyai 
to his friends. The living world around Socrates put him to 
death. The world’s great wise men, inventors, scientists, phil- 
osophers, prophets, have not usually spent their days rubbing 
elbows with the bricklayer. Yet these men have served 
their race better than all the good-fellows that ever lived. 
To each his gifts. If I succeed in reducing the principle of 
human evolution to its eternal law, I need not fear the judg- 
ment of posterity upon my life. I shall, in fact, have per- 
formed the highest service to humankind that a finite mind 
can hope to compass. Nevertheless, I am impressed by much 
that you say. I daresay a good deal of it is valuable. All 
of it I engage to analyze and consider dispassionately at my 
leisure. Meantime, I thank you for your interest in the 
matter. Good-evening.” 


1 62 


QUEED 


“Mr. Queed.” 

Sharlee rose hurriedly, since hurry was so evidently 
necessary. She felt profoundly stirred, she hardly knew 
why; all her airs of a haughty princess were fled; and she 
intercepted him with no remnant of her pretense that she 
was putting a shabby inferior in his place. 

“I want to tell you,” she said, somewhat nervously, 
“that I — I — admire very much the way you’ve taken 
this. No ordinary man would have listened with such — ” 

“I never pretended to be an ordinary man.” 

He moved, but she stood unmoving in front of him, the 
pretty portrait of a lady in blue, and the eyes that she fas- 
tened upon him reminded him vaguely of Fifi’s. 

“Perhaps I — should tell you,” said Sharlee, “just why 
I—” 

“Now don’t,” he said, smiling faintly at her with his old 
air of a grandfather — “don’t spoil it all by saying that you 
did n’t mean it.” 

Under his smile she colored a little, and, despite herself, 
looked confused. He took advantage of her embarrassment 
to pass her with another bow and go out, leaving her 
struggling desperately with the feeling that he had got the 
best of her after all. 

But the door opened again a little way, almost at once, 
and the trim-cut, academic face, with the lamplight falling 
upon the round glasses and blotting them out in a yellow 
smudge, appeared in the crevice. 

“By the way, you were wrong in saying that I pulled 
down my blind on the evolutionary process now going on 
in the South. I give four thousand words to it in my His- 
torical Perspective, volume one.” 


XIV 


In which Klinker quotes Scripture , and Queed has helped Fiji 
with her Lessons for the Last Time . 



HE tax-articles in the Post had ceased after the 


adjournment of the Legislature, which body gave no 


signs of ever having heard of them. Mr. Queed’s 
new series dealt authoritatively with “Currency Systems 
of the World.” He polished the systems off at the rate of 
three a week. But he had asked and obtained permission 
to submit, also, voluntary contributions on topics of his 
own choosing, and now for a fortnight these offerings had 
died daily in Colonel Cowles’s waste-basket. 

As for his book, Queed could not bear to think of it in 
these days. Deliberately he had put a winding-sheet about 
his heart’s desire, and laid it away in a drawer, until such 
time as he had indisputably qualified himself to be editor of 
the Post. Having qualified, he could open that drawer again, 
with a rushing access of stifled ardor, and await the Colonel’s 
demise; but to do this, he figured now, would take him not 
less than two months and a half. Two months and a half 
wrenched from the Schedule ! That sacred bill of rights not 
merely corrupted, but for a space nullified and cancelled! 
Yes, it was the ultimate sacrifice that outraged pride of 
intellect had demanded; but the young man would not 
flinch. And there were moments when Trainer Klinker was 
startled by the close-shut misery of his face. 

The Scriptorium had been degraded into a sickening 
school of journalism. Day after day, night after night, 
Queed sat at his tiny table poring over back files of the Post , 
examining Colonel Cowles’s editorials as a geologist ex- 
amines a Silurian deposit. He analyzed, classified, tabu- 


1 64 QUEED 

lated, computed averages, worked out underlying laws; and 
gradually, with great travail — for the journalese language 
was to him as Greek to another — he deduced from a thou- 
sand editorials a few broad principles, somewhat as fol- 
lows : — 

1. That the Colonel dealt with a very wide range of 
concrete topics, including many that appeared extremely 
trivial. (Whereas he, Queed, had dealt almost exclusively 
with abstract principles, rarely taking cognizance of any 
event that had happened later than 1850.) 

2. That nearly all the Colonel’s “best” articles — i. e ., 
best-liked, most popular: the kind that Major Brooke and 
Mr. Bylash, or even Miss Miller, were apt to talk about at 
the supper-table — dealt with topics of a purely local and 
ephemeral interest. 

3. That the Colonel never went deeply or exhaustively 
into any group of facts, but that, taking one broad simple 
hypothesis as his text, he hammered that over and over, 
saying the same thing again and again in different ways, 
but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque 
phrasing. 

4. That the Colonel invariably got his humorous effects 
by a good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process 
of which was to exaggerate the argument or travesty the 
cause he was attacking until it became absurd. 

5. That the Colonel, no matter what his theme, always 
wrote with vigor and heat and color : so that even if he were 
dealing with something on the other side of the world, you 
might suppose that he, personally, was intensely gratified 
or extremely indignant about it, as the case might be. 

These principles Queed was endeavoring, with his pecu- 
liar faculty for patient effort, to apply practically in his 
daily offerings. It is enough to say that he found the task 
harder than Klinker’s Exercises, and that the little article 
on the city’s method of removing garbage, which failed to 
appear in this morning’s Post, had stood him seven hours of 
time. 


QUEED 165 

It was a warm rainy night in early May. Careful listening 
disclosed the fact that Buck Klinker, who had as usual 
walked up from the gymnasium with Queed, was changing 
his shoes in the next room, preparatory for supper. Other- 
wise the house was very still. Fifi had been steadily re- 
ported “not so well” for a long time and, for two days, very 
ill. Queed sitting before the table, his gas ablaze and his 
shade up, tilted back his chair and thought of her now. 
All at once, with no conscious volition on his part, he found 
himself saying over the startling little credo that Fifi had 
suggested for his taking, on the day he sent her the roses. 

To like men and do the things that men do. To smoke. To 
laugh. To joke and tell funny stories. To take a . . . 

The door of the Scriptorium-editorium opened and Buck 
Klinker, entering without formalities, threw himself, 
according to his habit, upon the tiny bed. This time he came 
by invitation, to complete the decidedly interesting con- 
versation upon which the two men had walked up town; 
but talk did not at once begin. A book rowelled the small 
of Klinker’s back as he reclined upon the pillow, and pluck- 
ing it from beneath him, he glanced at the back of it. 

. “ Vanity Fair. Did n’t know you ever read story-books. 
Doc.” 

The Doc did not answer. He was occupied with the 
thought that not one of the things that Fifi had urged upon 
him did he at present do. Smoking he could of course take 
up at any time. Buck Klinker worked in a tobacconist’s 
shop ; it might be a good idea to consult him as to what was 
the best way to begin. As for telling funny stories — did he 
for the life of him know one to tell? He racked his brain 
in vain. There were two books that he remembered having 
seen in the Astor Library, The Percy Anecdotes , and Mark 
Lemon’s Jest Book; perhaps the State Library had them. 

. . . Stay! Did not Willoughby himself somewhere intro- 
duce an anecdote of a distinctly humorous nature? 

“It ain’t much,” said Buck, dropping Thackeray to the 
floor. “ I read the whole thing once. — No, I guess I ’m 


1 66 QUEED 

thinkin’ of The County Fair , a drammer that I saw at the 
Bee-jou. But I guess they’re all the same, those Fairs. 

“Say Doc,” he went on presently, “I’m going to double 
you on Number Seven, beginning from to-morrow, hear?” 

Number Seven was one of the stiffest of Klinker’s Exer- 
cises for All Parts of the Body. Queed looked up absently. 

“That’s right,” said his trainer, inexorably. “It’s just 
what you need. I had a long talk with Smithy, last night.” 

“Buck,” said the Doctor, clearing his throat, “have I 
ever — ahem — told you of the famous reply of Dr. John- 
son to the Billingsgate fishwives?” 

“Johnson? Who? Fat, sandy-haired man lives on Third 
Street?” 

“No, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the well-known English author 
and — character. It is related that on one occasion Dr. 
Johnson approached the fishwives at Billingsgate to pur- 
chase of their wares. The exact details of the story are not 
altogether clear in my memory, but, as I recall it, something 
the good Doctor said angered these women, for they began 
showering him with profane and blasphemous names. At 
this style of language the fishwives are said to be extremely 
proficient. What do you fancy that Dr. Johnson called 
them in return? But you could hardly guess. He called 
them parallelopipedons. I am not entirely certain whether 
it was parallelopipedons or isosceles triangles. Possibly there 
are two versions of the story.” 

Buck stared at him, frankly and greatly bewildered, and 
noticed that the little Doctor was staring at him, with strong 
marks of anxiety on his face. 

“I should perhaps say,” added Queed, “that parallelo- 
pipedons and isosceles triangles are not profane or swearing 
words at all. They are, in fact, merely the designations 
applied to geometrical figures.” 

“Oh,” said Klinker. “Oh.” 

There was a brief pause. 

“Ah, well! ... Go on with what you were telling me as 
we walked up, then!” 


QUEED 167 

•"Sure thing. But I don’t catch the conversation. What 
wab all that con you were giving me — ?” 

“Con?” 

“About Johnson and the triangles.” 

“It simply occurred to me to tell you a funny story, of 
the sort that men are known to like, with the hope of 
amusing you — ” 

“Why, that was n’t a funny story, Doc.” 

“I assure you that it was.” 

“Don’t see it,” said Klinker. 

“That is not my responsibility, in any sense.” 

Thus Doctor Queed, sitting stiffly on his hard little chair, 
and gazing with annoyance at Klinker through the iron 
bars at the foot of the bed. 

“Blest if I pipe,” said Buck, and scratched his head. 

“I cannot both tell the stories and furnish the brains 
to appreciate them. Kindly proceed with what you were 
telling me.” 

So Buck, obliging but mystified, dropped back upon the 
bed and proceeded, tooth-pick energetically at work. His 
theme was a problem with which nearly every city is un- 
happily familiar. In Buck’s terminology, it was identified 
as “The Centre Street mashers”: those pimply, weak- 
faced, bad-eyed young men who congregate at prominent 
corners every afternoon, especially Saturdays, to smirk at 
the working-girls, and to pass, wherever they could, from 
their murmured, “Hello, Kiddo,” and “Where you goin’, 
baby?” to less innocent things. 

Buck’s air of leisureliness dropped from him as he talked; 
his orange-stick worked ever more and more furiously; his 
honest voice grew passionate as he described conditions as 
he knew them. 

“ . . . And some fool of a girl, no more than a child for 
knowing what she’s doin’, laughs and answers back — just 
for the fun of it, not looking for harm, and right there’s 
where your trouble begins. Maybe that night after doin' 
the picture shows; maybe another night; but it’s sure to 


168 QUEED 

come. Dammit, Doc, I ’m no saint nor sam-singer and I ’ve 
done things I had n’t ought like other men, and woke up 
shamed the next morning, too, but I ’ve got a sister who ’s a 
decent good girl as there is anywhere, and by God, sir, I ’d 
kill a man who just looked at her with the dirty eyes of them 
little soft-mouth blaggards ! 

Queed, unaffectedly interested, asked the usual question 
— could not the girls be taught at home the dangers of 
such acquaintances? — and Buck pulverized it in the usual 
way. 

“Who in blazes is goin’ to teach ’em? Don’t you know 
anything about what kind of homes they got? Why, man, 
they’re the sisters of the little blaggards /” 

He painted a dark picture of the home-life of many of 
these girls : its hard work and unrelenting poverty ; its cheer- 
lessness; the absence of any fun; the irresistible allurement 
of the flashily-dressed stranger who jingles money in his 
pocket and offers to “show a good time.” Then he told a 
typical story, the story of a little girl he knew, who worked 
in a department store for three dollars and a half a week, and 
whose drunken father took over the last cent of that every 
Saturday night. This girl’s name was Eva Bernheimer, and 
she was sixteen years old and “in trouble.” 

“You know what, Doc?” Buck ended. “ You ’d ought to 
take it up in the Post — that ’s what. There ’s a fine piece 
to be written, showin’ up them little hunters.” 

It was characteristic of Doctor Queed that such an idea 
had not and would not have occurred to him: applying 
his new science of editorial writing to a practical problem 
dipped from the stream of every-day life was still rather 
beyond him. But it was also characteristic of him that, once 
the idea had been suggested to him, he instantly perceived 
its value. He looked at Buck admiringly through the iron 
bars. 

“You are quite right. There is.” 

“You know they are trying to get up a reformatory — 
girls’ home, some call it. That’s all right, if you can’t do 


QUEED 169 

better, but it don’t get to the bottom of it. The right way 
with a thing like this is to take it before it happens 1” 

“You are quite right, Buck.” 

“Yes — but how ’re you goin’ to do it? You sit up here 
all day and night with your books and studies, Doc — 
where’s your cure for a sorry trouble like this?” 

“That is a fair question. I cannot answer definitely until 
I have studied the situation out in a practical way. But I 
will say that the general problem is one of the most difficult 
with which social science has to deal.” 

“ I know what had ought to be done. The blaggards ought 
to be shot. Damn every last one of them, I say.” 

Klinker conversed in his anger something like the ladies 
of Billingsgate, but Queed did not notice this. He sat back 
in his chair, absorbedly thinking that here, at all events, 
was a theme which had enough practical relation with life. 
He himself had seen a group of the odious “mashers” with 
his own eyes; Buck had pointed them out as they walked 
up. Never had a social problem come so close home to him 
as this: not a thing of text-book theories, but a burning 
issue working out around the corner on people that Klinker 
knew. And Klinker’s question had been an acute one, chal- 
lenging the immediate value of social science itself. 

His thought veered, swept out of its channel by an un- 
wonted wave of bitterness. Klinker had offered him this 
material, Klinker had advised him to write an editorial 
about it, Klinker had pointed out for him, in almost a 
superior way, just where the trouble lay. Nor was this all. 
Of late everybody seemed to be giving him advice. Only 
the other week it was Fifi; and that same day, the young 
lady Charles Weyland. What was there about him that 
invited this sort of thing? . . . And he was going to take 
Klinker’s advice ; he had seized upon it gratefully. Nor could 
he say that he was utterly insensate to Fifi’s: he had caught 
himself saying over part of it not ten minutes ago. As for 
Charles Weyland ’s ripsaw criticisms, he had analyzed them 
dispassionately, as he had promised, and his reason rejected 


170 QUEED 

them in toto. Yet he could not exactly say that he had 
wholly purged them out of his mind. No . . . the fact was 
that some of her phrases had managed to burn themselves 
into his brain. 

Presently Klinker said another thing that his friend the 
little Doctor remembered for a long time. 

“Do you know what’s the finest line in Scripture, Doc? 
But * He spake of the temple of His body. I heard a minister 
get that off in a church once, in a sermon, and I don’t guess 
I’ll ever forget it. A dandy, ain’t it? . . . Exercise and live 
straight. Keep your temple strong and clean. If I was a 
parson, I tell you, I ’d go right to Seventh and Centre next 
Saturday and give a talk to them blaggards on that. But 
He spake of . . .” 

Klinker stopped as though he had been shot. A sudden 
agonized scream from downstairs jerked him off the bed and 
to his feet in a second, solemn as at the last trump. He 
stared at Queed wide-eyed, his honest red face suddenly 
white. 

“God forgive me for talkin’ so loud. ... I’d ought to 
have known. . . .” 

“What is it? Who was that? ” demanded Queed, startled 
more by Klinker’s look than by that scream. 

But Klinker only turned and slipped softly out of the 
door, tipping on his toes as though somebody near at hand 
were asleep. 

Queed was left bewildered, and completely at a loss. 
Whatever the matter was, it clearly concerned Buck Klinker. 
Equally clearly, it did not concern him. People had a right 
to scream if they felt that way, without having a horde of 
boarders hurry out and call them to book. 

However, his scientist’s fondness for getting at the 
underlying causes — or as some call it, curiosity — pres- 
ently obtained control of him, and he went downstairs. 

There is no privacy of grief in the communism of a 
middle-class boarding-house. It is ordered that your neigh- 
bor shall gaze upon your woe and you shall stare at his 


QUEED 171 

anguish, when both are new and raw. That cry of pain had 
been instantly followed by a stir of movement; a little 
shiver ran through the house. Doors opened and shut; 
voices murmured; quick feet sounded on the stairs. Now 
the boarders were gathered in the parlor, very still and 
solemn, yet not to save their lives unaware that for them 
the humdrum round was to go on just the same. And here, 
of course, is no matter of a boarding-house : for queens must 
eat though kings lie high in state. 

To Mrs. Paynter’s parlor came a girl, white-faced and 
shadowy-eyed, but for those hours at least, calm and tear- 
less and the mistress of herself. The boarders rose as she 
appeared in the door, and she saw that after all she had no 
need to tell them anything. They came and took her hand, 
one by one, which was the hardest to bear, and even Mr. 
Bylash seemed touched with a new dignity, and even Miss 
Miller’s pompadour looked human and sorry. But two 
faces Miss Weyland did not see among the kind-eyed 
boarders: the old professor, who had locked himself in his 
room, and the little Doctor who was at that moment coming 
down the steps. 

“ Supper’s very late,” said she. “Emma and Laura . . . 
have been much upset. I’ll have it on the table in a 
minute.” 

She turned into the hall and saw Queed on the stairs. 
He halted his descent five steps from the bottom, and she 
came to the banisters and stood and looked up at him. 
And if any memory of their last meeting was with them then, 
neither of them gave any sign of it. 

“You know — ?” 

“No, I don’t know,” he replied, disturbed by her look, 
he did not know why, and involuntarily lowering his voice. 
“I came down expressly to find out.” 

“Fifi— She—” 

“Is worse again?” 

“She . . . stopped breathing a few minutes ago.” 

“ Dead ! ” 


172 QUEED 

Sharlee winced visibly at the word, as the fresh stricken 
always will. 

The little Doctor turned his head vaguely away. The 
house was so still that the creaking of the stairs as his weight 
shifted from one foot to another, sounded horribly loud ; he 
noticed it, and regretted having moved. The idea of Fifi’s 
dying had of course never occurred to him. Something put 
into his head the simple thought that he would never help 
the little girl with her algebra again, and at once he was 
conscious of an odd and decidedly unpleasant sensation, 
somewhere far away inside of him. He felt that he ought to 
say something, to sum up his attitude toward the unexpected 
event, but for once in his life he experienced a difficulty in 
formulating his thought in precise language. However, the 
pause was of the briefest. 

“I think,” said Sharlee, “the funeral will be Monday 
afternoon. . . . You will go, won’t you?” 

Queed turned upon her a clouded brow. The thought of 
taking personal part in such mummery as a funeral — 
“barbaric rites,” he called them in the forthcoming Work — 
was entirely distasteful to him. “No,” he said, hastily. 
“No, I could hardly do that — ” 

“Fifi — would like it. It is the last time you will have 
to do anything for her.” 

“Like it ? It is hardly as if she would know — ! ” 

“Mightn’t you show your regard for a friend just the 
same, even if your friend was never to know about it? . . . 
Besides — I think of these things another way, and so did 
Fifi.” 

He peered down at her over the banisters, oddly dis- 
quieted. The flaring gas lamp beat mercilessly upon her 
face, and it occurred to him that she looked tired around her 
eyes. 

“I think Fifi will know . . . and be glad,” said Sharlee. 
“She liked and admired you. Only day before yesterday 
she spoke of you. Now she . . . has gone, and this is the 
one way left for any of us to show that we are sorry.” 


QUEED 173 

Long afterwards, Queed thought that if Charles Wey 
land’s lashes had not glittered with sudden tears at that 
moment he would have refused her. But her lashes did so 
glitter, and he capitulated at once; and turning instantly 
went heavy-hearted up the stairs. 


XV 

In a Country Churchyard , and afterwards; of Friends: how 
they take your Time while they live , and then die , up- 
setting your Evenings Work; and what Buck Klinker saw 
in the Scriptorium at 2 a. m . 

Q UEED was caught, like many another rationalist 
before him, by the stirring beauty of the burial 
service of the English church. 

Fifi’s funeral was in the country, at a little church set 
down in a beautiful grove which reminds all visitors of the 
saying about God’s first temples. Near here Mrs. Paynter 
was born and spent her girlhood ; here Fifi, before her last ill- 
ness, had come every Sabbath morning to the Sunday- 
school ; here lay the little strip of God’s acre that the now 
childless widow called her own. You come by the new elec- 
tric line, one of those high-speed suburban roads which, all 
over the country, are doing so much to persuade city people 
back to the land. The cars are steam-road size. Two of 
them had been provided for the mourners, and there was no 
room to spare ; for the Paynter family connection was large, 
and it seemed that little Fifi had many friends. 

From Stop 11, where the little station is, your course 
is by the woodland path; past the little springhouse, over 
the tiny rustic bridge, and so on up the shady slope to the 
cluster of ancient pines. In the grove stood carriages ; buggy 
horses reined to the tall trees ; even that abomination around 
a church, the motor of the vandals. In the walk through 
the woods, Queed found himself side by side with a fat, 
scarlet-faced man, who wore a vest with brass buttons and 
immediately began talking to him like a lifelong friend. 
He was a motorman on the suburban line, it seemed, and 
had known Fifi very well. 


QUEED 175 

“No, sir, I would n’t believe it when my wife seen it in 
the paper and called it out to me, an’ I says there’s some 
mistake, you can be sure, and she says no, here it is in the 
paper, you can read it for y’self. But I would n’t believe 
it till I went by the house on the way to my run, and there 
was the crape on the door. An’ I tell you, suh, I could n’t 
a felt worse if ’t was one o’ my own kids. Why, it seems like 
only the other morning she skipped onto my car, laughin’ 
and sayin’, ‘How are you to-day, Mr. Barnes?’ Why she 
and me been buddies for nigh three years, and she took my 
9.30 north car every Sunday morning, rain or shine, just as 
reg’lar, and was the only one I ever let stand out on my 
platform, bein’ strictly agin all rules, and my old partner 
Hornheim was fired for allowin’ it, it ain’t six months since. 
But what could I do when she asked me, please, Mr. Barnes, 
with that sweet face o’ hers, and her rememberin’ me every 
Christmas that came along just like I was her Pa. . . .” 

The motorman talked too much, but he proved useful in 
finding seats up near the front, where, being fat, he took 
up considerably more than his share of room. 

Unless Tim had taken him to the Cathedral once, twenty 
years ago, it was the first time that Queed had ever been 
inside a church. He had read Renan at fourteen, finally 
discarding all religious beliefs in the same year. Approxi- 
mately Spencer’s First Cause satisfied his reason, though 
he meant to buttress Spencer’s contention in its weakest 
place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the 
exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolu- 
tionary function were still indeterminate in his system. 
He, like all cosmic philosophers, found this the most baffling 
and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here in this little 
country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the 
supreme religious belief. There was some compensation 
for his enforced attendance in that thought. He looked 
about him with genuine and candid interest. The hush, the 
dim light, the rows upon rows of sober-faced people, seemed 
to him properly impressive. He was struck by the wealth 


176 QUEED 

of flowers massed all over the chancel, and wondered if that 
was its regular state. The pulpit and the lectern ; the altar, 
which he easily identified; the stained-glass windows with 
their obviously symbolic pictures; the bronze pipes of the 
little organ; the unvested choir, whose function he vaguely 
made out — over all these his intelligent eye swept, curi- 
ously; and lastly it went out of the open window and lost 
itself in the quiet sunny woods outside. 

Strange and full of wonder. This incredible instinct for 
adoration — this invincible insistence in believing, in defi- 
ance of all reason, that man was not born to die as the flesh 
dies. What, after all, was the full significance of this unique 
phenomenon? 

I am the resurrection and the life , saith the Lord; he that 
belieueth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live . . . . 

A loud resonant voice suddenly cut the hush with these 
words and immediately they were all standing. Queed was 
among the first to rise; the movement was like a reflex 
action. For there was something in the thrilling timbre of 
that voice that seemed to pull him to his feet regardless of 
his will; something, in fact, that impelled him to crane his 
neck around and peer down the dim aisle to discover imme- 
diately who was the author of it. 

His eye fell on a young man advancing, clad in white robes 
the like of which he had never seen, and wearing the look 
of the morning upon his face. In his hands he bore an open 
book, but he did not glance at it. His head was thrown 
back; his eyes seemed fastened on something outside and 
beyond the church; and he rolled out the victorious words 
as though he would stake all that he held dearest in this 
world that their prophecy was true. 

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, 
and not another. . . . 

But behind the young man rolled a little stand on wheels, 
on which lay a long box banked in flowers ; and though the 
little Doctor had never been at a funeral before, and never 
in the presence of death, he knew that here must lie the 


QUEED 177 

mortal remains of his little friend, Fifi. From this point 
onward Queed ’s interest in the service became, so to say, 
less purely scientific. 

There was some antiphonal reciting, and then a long 
selection which the young man in robes read with the same 
voice of solemn triumph. It is doubtful if anybody in the 
church followed him with the fascinated attention of the 
young evolutionist. Soon the organ rumbled, and the little 
choir, standing, broke into song. 

For all the Saints who from their labors rest . . . 

Saints! Well, well, was it imaginable that they thought of 
Fifi that way already ? Why, it was only three weeks ago 
that he had sent her the roses and she . . . 

A black-gloved hand, holding an open book, descended out 
of the dim space behind him. It came to him, as by an in- 
spiration, that the book was being offered for his use in 
some mysterious connection. He grasped it gingerly, and 
his friend the motorman, jabbing at the text with a scarlet 
hand, whispered raucously: “ ’S what they’re singin’.” 
But the singers had traveled far before the young man was 
able to find and follow them. 

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, 

Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, 

And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. 

The girls in the choir sang on, untroubled by a doubt: — 

But lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day; 

The saints triumphant rise in bright array; 

The King of glory passes on His way. 

They marched outside following the flower-banked casket 
into the little cemetery, and Queed stood with bared head 
like the others, watching the committal of dust unto dust. 
In the forefront of the mournful gathering, nearest the 
grave’s edge, there stood three women heavily swathed in 
black. Through all the rite now, suppressed sobbing ran 
like a motif. Soon fell upon all ears the saddest of all 


178 QUEED 

sounds, the pitiless thud of the first earth upon the stiff lid. 
On the other side of the irregular circle, Queed saw the 
coarse red motorman ; tears were rolling down his fat cheeks ; 
but never noticing them he was singing loudly, far off the 
key, from the book the black-gloved hand had given Queed. 
The hymn they were singing now also spoke surely and 
naturally of the saints. The same proud note, the young 
man observed, ran through the service from beginning to 
end. Hymn and prayer and reading all confidently assumed 
that Fifi was dead only to this mortal eye, but in another 
world, open to all those gathered about the grave for their 
seeking, she lived in some marvelously changed form — her 
body being made like unto his own glorious body. . . . 

In the homeward-bound car, Queed fully recaptured his 
poise, and redirected his thoughts into rational channels. 

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul had not a ra- 
tional leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely 
the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped 
out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It 
was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbe- 
lievable persistence this doctrine had survived through his- 
tory. Science had annihilated it again and again, butthese 
people resolutely stopped their ears to science. They could 
not answer science with argument, so they had answered 
her with the axe and the stake ; and they were still capable 
of doing that whenever they thought it desirable. Strange 
spectacle! What was the “ conflict between Religion and 
Science” but man’s desperate struggle against his own rea- 
son? Benjamin Kidd had that right at any rate. 

Yet did these people really believe their doctrine of the 
saved body and the saved soul? They said they did, but 
did they? If they believed it surely, as they believed that 
this night would be followed by a new day, if they believed 
it passionately as they believed that money is the great 
earthly good, then certainly the biggest of their worldly 
affairs would be less than a grain of sand by the sea against 
the everlasting glories that awaited them. Yet . . . look 


QUEED 179 

at them all about him in the car, these people who told 
themselves that they had started Fifi on the way to be a 
saint, in which state they expected to remeet her. Did they 
so regard their worldly affairs? By to-morrow they would 
be at each other’s throats, squabbling, cheating, slandering, 
lying, fighting desperately to gain some ephemeral advan- 
tage — all under the eye of the magnificent guerdon they 
pretended to believe in and knew they were jeopardizing 
by such acts. No, it was pure self-hypnosis. Weak man 
demanded offsets for his earthly woes, and he had concocted 
them in a world of his own imagining. That was the history 
of man’s religions; the concoction of other worldly offsets 
for worldly woes. In their heart of hearts, all knew that 
they were concoctions, and the haruspices laughed when 
they met each other. 

Supper was early at Mrs. Paynter’s, as though to atone 
for the tardiness of yesterday. The boarders dispatched it 
not without recurring cheerfulness, broken now and again 
by fits of decorous silence. You could see that by to-morrow, 
or it might be next day, the house would be back in its nor- 
mal swing again. 

Mr. Queed withdrew to his little chamber. He trod the 
steps softly for once, and perhaps this was why, as he passed 
Mrs. Paynter’s room, his usually engrossed ear caught the 
sound of weeping, quiet but unrestrained, ceaseless, racking 
weeping, running on evermore, the weeping of Rachel for 
her children, who would not be comforted. 

The little Doctor shut the door of the Scriptorium and lit 
the gas. So far, his custom; but here his whim and his 
wont parted. Instead of seating himself at his table, where 
the bound Post for January-March, 1902, awaited his ex- 
ploration, he laid himself down on his tiny bed. 

If he were to die to-night, who would weep for him like 
that? 

The thought had come unbidden to his mind and stuck 
in his metaphysics like a burr. Now he remembered that 
the question was not entirely a new one. Fifi had once asked 


180 QUEED 

him who would be sorry if he died, and had answered herself 
by saying that she would. However, Fifi was dead, and 
therefore released from her promise. 

Yes, Fifi was dead. He would never help her with her 
algebra again. The thought filled him with vague, unaccount- 
able regrets. He felt that he would willingly take twenty 
minutes a night from the wrecked Schedule to have her 
come back, but unfortunately there was no way of arranging 
that now. He remembered the night he had sent Fifi out 
of the dining-room for coughing, and the remembrance 
made him distinctly uncomfortable. He rather wished that 
he had told Fifi he was sorry about that, but it was too late 
now. Still he had told her that he was her friend; he was 
glad to remember that. But here, from a new point of view, 
was the trouble about having friends. They took your time 
while they lived, and then they went off and died and upset 
your evening’s work. 

Clearly, Fifi left behind many sorrowful friends, as shown 
by her remarkable funeral. If he himself were to die, Tim 
and Murphy Queed would probably feel sorrowful, but they 
would hardly come to the funeral. For one thing, Tim 
could not come because of his duties on the force, and 
Murphy, for all lie knew, was undergoing incarceration. 
About the only person he could think of as a probable 
attendant at his graveside was William Klinker. Yes, Buck 
would certainly be there, though it was asking a good deal 
to expect him to weep. A funeral consisting of only one 
person would look rather odd to those who were familiar 
with such crowded churches as that he had seen to-day. 
People passing by would nudge each other and say that the 
dead must have led an eccentric life, indeed, to be so alone 
at the end. . . . Come to think of it, though, there would 
n’t be any funeral. He had nothing to do with those most 
interesting but clearly barbaric rites. Of course his body 
would be cremated by directions in the will. The operation 
would be private, attracting no attention from anybody. 
Buck would make the arrangements. He tried to picture 
Buck weeping near the incinerator, and failed. 


QUEED 181 

Then there was his father, whom, in twenty-four years’ 
sharing of the world together, he had never met. The man’s 
behavior was odd, to say the least. From the world’s point 
of view he had declined to own his son. For such an unusual 
breach of custom, there must be some adequate explana- 
tion, and the circumstances all pointed one way. This was 
that his mother (whom his boyhood had pictured as a 
woman of distinction who had eloped with somebody far 
beneath her) had failed to marry his father. The persistent 
mystery about his birth had always made him skeptical of 
Tim’s statement that he had been present at the marriage. 
But he rarely thought of the matter at all now. The moral 
responsibility was none of his; and as for a name, Queed 
was as good as any other. X or Y was a good enough name 
for a real man, whose life could demonstrate his utter inde- 
pendence of the labels so carefully pasted upon him by en- 
vironment and circumstance. 

Still, if he were to die, he felt that his father, if yet alive, 
should come forward and weep for him, even as Mrs. 
Paynter was weeping for Fifi down in the Second Front. 
He should stand out like a man and take from Buck’s hand 
the solemn ceremonies of cremation. He tried to picture 
his father weeping near the incinerator, and failed, partly 
owing to the mistiness surrounding that gentleman’s bodily 
appearance. He felt that his father was dodging his just re- 
sponsibilities. For the first time in his life he perceived that, 
under certain circumstances, it might be an advantage to 
have some definite individual to whom you can point and 
say: “There goes my father.” 

As it was, it all came down to him and Buck. He and 
Buck were alone in the world together. He rather clung 
to the thought of Buck, and instantly caught himself at it. 
Very well; let him take it that way then. Take Buck as a 
symbol of the world, of those friendships which played such 
certain havoc with a man’s Schedule. Was he glad that he 
had Buck or was he not? 

The little Doctor lay on his back in the glare thinking 


1 8 a QUEED 

things out. The gas in his eyes was an annoyance, but he 
did not realize it, and so did not get up, as another man 
would have done, and put it out. 

Certainly it was an extraordinary thing that the only 
critics he had ever had in his life had all three attacked 
his theory of living at precisely the same point. They 
had all three urged him to get in touch with his environ- 
ment. He himself could unanswerably demonstrate that 
in such degree as he succeeded in isolating himself from his 
environment — at least until his great work was done — 
in just that degree would his life be successful. But these 
three seemed to declare, with the confidence of those who 
state an axiom, that in just that degree was his life a failure. 
Of course they could not demonstrate their contention as 
he could demonstrate his, but the absence of reasoning did 
not appear to shake their assurance in the smallest. Here 
then was another apparent conflict of instinct with reason: 
their instinct with his reason. Perhaps he might have dis- 
missed the whole thing as merely their religion, but that his 
father, with that mysterious letter of counsel, was among 
them. He did not picture his father as a religious man. 
Besides, Fifi, asked point-blank if that was her religion, 
had denied, assuring him, singularly enough, that it was 
only common-sense. 

And among them, among all the people that had touched 
him in this new life, there was no denying that he had had 
some curiously unsettling experiences. 

He had been ready .to turn the pages of the book of life 
for Fifi, an infant at his knee, and all at once Fifi had taken 
the book from his hands and read aloud, in a language 
which was quite new to him, a lecture on his own short- 
comings. There was no denying that her question about 
his notions on altruism had given him an odd, arresting 
glimpse of himself from a new peak. He had set out in his 
pride to punish Mr. Pat, and Mr. Pat had severely punished 
him, revealing him humiliatingly to himself as a physical 
incompetent. He had dismissed Buck Klinker as a faintly 


QUEED 183 

amusing brother to the ox, and now Buck Klinker was 
giving him valuable advice about his editorial work, to say 
nothing of jerking him by the ears toward physical compe- 
tency. He had thought to honor the Post by contributing 
of his wisdom to it, and the Post had replied by contemptu- 
ously kicking him out. He had laughed at Colonel Cowles’s 
editorials, and now he was staying out of bed of nights 
slavishly struggling to imitate them. He had meant to give 
Miss Weyland some expert advice some day about the 
running of her department, and suddenly she had turned 
about and stamped him as an all-around failure, meet not 
for reverence, but the laughter and pity of men. 

So far as he knew, nobody in the world admired him. 
They might admire his work, but him personally they felt 
sorry for or despised. Few even admired his work. The 
Post had given him satisfactory proof of that. Conant, 
Willoughby, and Smathers would admire it — yes, wish to 
the Lord that they had written it. But would that fill his 
cup to overflowing ? By the way, had not Fifi asked him that 
very question, too — whether he would consider a life of 
that sort a successful life? Well — would he? Or could it 
imaginably be said that Fifi, rather, had had a successful 
life, as evidenced by her profoundly interesting funeral? 

Was it possible that a great authority on human society 
could make himself an even greater authority by personally 
assuming a part in the society which he theoretically admin- 
istered? Was it possible that he was missing some factor 
of large importance by his addiction to isolation and a 
schedule? 

In short, was it conceivable that he had it all wrong from 
the beginning, as the young lady Charles Weyland had said? 

The little Doctor lay still on his bed and his precious 
minutes slipped into hours. ... If he finished his book at 
twenty-seven, what would he do with the rest of his life? 
Besides defending it from possible criticism, besides ex- 
pounding and amplifying it a little further as need seemed 
to be, there would be no more work for him to do. Supreme 


1 84 QUEED 

essence of philosophy, history, and all science as it was, it 
was the final word of human wisdom. You might say that 
with it the work of the world was done. How then should 
he spend the remaining thirty or forty years of his life? 
As matters stood now he had, so to say, twenty years start 
on himself. Through the peculiar circumstances of his life, 
he had reached a point in his reading and study at twenty- 
four which another man could not hope to reach before he 
was forty-five or fifty. Other men had done daily work for 
a livelihood, and had only their evenings for their heart’s 
desire. Spencer was a civil engineer. Mill was a clerk in an 
India house. Comte taught mathematics. But he, in all his 
life, had not averaged an hour a week’s enforced distraction : 
all had gone to his own work. You might say that he was 
entitled to a heavy arrears in this direction. If he liked, he 
could idle for ten years, twenty years, and still be more than 
abreast of his age. 

And as it was, he could not pretend that he had kept the 
faith, that he was inviolably holding his Schedule unspotted 
from the world. No, he himself had outraged and deflowered 
the Schedule. Klinker’s Exercises and the Post were delib- 
erate impieties. And he could not say that they had the 
sanction of his reason. The exercises had only a partial 
sanction; the Post no sanction at all. Both were but sops 
to wounded pride. Here, then, was a pretty situation: he, 
the triumphant rationalist, the toy of utterly irrational 
impulses — of an utterly irrational instinct. And this new 
impulse tugging at his inside, driving him to heed the irra- 
tional advice of his critics — what could it be but part and 
parcel of the same mysterious but apparently deep-seated 
instinct? And what was the real significance of this instinct, 
and what in the name of Jerusalem was the matter with him 
anyway? 

He was twenty-four years old, without upbringing, and 
utterly alone in the world. He had raised himself, body and 
soul, out of printed books, and about all the education he 


QUEED 185 

ever had was half an hour’s biting talk from Charles Wey- 
land. Of course he did not recognize his denied youth 
when it rose and fell upon him, but he did recognize that 
his assailant was doughty. He locked arms with it and 
together they fell into undreamed depths. 

Buck Klinker, returning from some stag devilry at the 
hour of two A. m., and attracted to the Scriptorium by the 
light under the door, found the little Doctor pacing the floor 
in his stocking feet, with the gas blazing and the shade up as 
high as it would go. He halted in his marchings to stare 
at Buck with wild unrecognition, and his face looked so 
white and fierce that honest Buck, like the good friend he 
was, only said, “Well — good-night, Doc,” and unobtru* 
sively withdrew. 


XVI 

Triumphal Return of Charles Gardiner West from the Old 
World; and of how the Other World had wagged in his 
Absence. 

M ANY pictured post-cards and an occasional brief 
note reminded Miss Weyland during the summer 
that Charles Gardiner West was pursuing his 
studies in the Old World with peregrinative zest. By the 
trail of colored photographs she followed his triumphal 
march. Rome knew the president-elect in early June; 
Naples, Florence, Milan, Venice in the same period. He 
investigated, presumably, the public school systems of 
Geneva and Berlin; the higher education drew him through 
the chateau country of France; for three weeks the head- 
waiters oi Paris (in the pedagogical district) were familiar 
with the clink of his coin ; and August’s first youth was gone 
before he was in London with the lake region a tramped 
road behind him. 

From the latter neighborhood (picture: Rydal Mount) he 
wrote Sharlee as follows : 

Sailing on the 21st, after the most glorious trip in history. Never 
so full of energy and enthusiasm. Running over with the most beau- 
tiful plans. 

The exact nature of these plans the writer did not indi- 
cate, but Sharlee’s mother, who always got down to break- 
fast first and read all the postals as they came, explained 
that the reference was evidently to Blaines College. West, 
however, did not sail on the 21st, even though that date 
was some days behind his original intentions. The itinerary 
with which he had set out had him home again, in fact, 
on August 15. For in the stress and hurry of making ready 


QUEED 187 

for the journey, together with a little preliminary rest which 
he felt his health required, he had to let his advertising cam- 
paign and other schemes for the good of the college go over 
until the fall. But collegiate methods obtaining in London 
were too fascinating, apparently, to be dismissed with any 
cursory glance. He sailed on the 25th, arrived home on the 
3rd of September, and on the 4th surprised Sharlee by drop- 
ping in upon her in her office. 

He was browned from his passage, appeared a little 
stouter, was very well dressed and good to look at, and fairly 
exuded vitality and pleasant humor. Sharlee was delighted 
and quite excited over seeing him again, though it may 
be noted, as shedding a side-light upon her character, that 
she did not greet him with “ Hello, Stranger!” However, her 
manner of salutation appeared perfectly satisfactory to 
West. 

They had the little office to themselves and plenty to talk 
about. 

“Doubtless you got my postals?” he asked. 

“Oh, stacks of them. I spent all one Saturday afternoon 
pasting them in an album as big as this table. They made 
a perfect fireside grand tour for me. What did you like best 
in all your trip?” 

“I think,” said West, turning his handsome blue eyes 
full upon her, “that I like getting back.” 

Sharlee laughed. “It’s done you a world of good; that’s 
plain, anyway. You look ready to remove mountains.” 

“Why, I can eat them — bite their heads off! I feel like a 
fighting-cock who’s been starved a shade too long for the 
good of the bystanders.” 

He laughed and waved his arms about to signify enormous 
vitality. Sharlee asked if he had been able to make a start 
yet with his new work. 

“You might say,” he replied, “that I dived head-first into 
it from the steamer.” 

He launched out into eager talk about his hopes for 
Blaines College. In all his wide circle of friends, he knew 


i88 QUEED 

no one who made so sympathetic and intelligent a listener 
as she. He talked freely, lengthily, even egotistically it 
might have seemed, had they not been such good friends and 
he so sure of her interest. Difficulties, it seemed, had already 
cropped out. He was not sure of the temper of his trustees, 
whom he had called together for an informal meeting that 
morning. Starting to advertise the great improvements that 
had taken place in the college, he had collided with the 
simple fact that no improvements had taken place. Even if 
he privately regarded his own accession in that light, he 
humorously pointed out, he could hardly advertise it, with 
old Dr. Gilfillan, the retired president, living around the 
corner and reading the papers. Again, taking his pencil to 
make a list of the special advantages Blaines had to offer, 
he was rather forcibly struck with the fact that it had no 
special advantages. But upon these and other difficulties, 
he touched optimistically, as though confident that under 
the right treatment, namely his treatment, all would soon 
yield. 

Sharlee, fired by his gay confidence, mused enthusias- 
tically. “ It’s inspiring to think what can be done! Really, 
it is no empty dream that the number of students might 
be doubled — quadrupled — in five years.” 

“Do you know,” said he, turning his glowing face upon 
her, “I’m not so eager for mere numbers now. That is one 
point on which my views have shifted during my studies 
this summer. My ideal is no longer a very large college — 
at least not necessarily large — but a college of the very 
highest standards. A distinguished faculty of recognized 
authorities in their several lines; an earnest student body, 
large if you can get them, but always made of picked men 
admitted on the strictest terms ; degrees recognized all over 
the country as an unvarying badge of the highest scholar* 
ship — these are what I shall strive for. My ultimate 
ambition,” said Charles Gardiner West, dreamily, “is to 
make of Blaines College an institution like the University 
of Paris.” 


QUEED 189 

He sprang up presently with great contrition, part real, 
part mock, over having absorbed so much of the honest 
tax-payer’s property, the Departmental time. No, he could 
not be induced to appropriate a moment more ; he was going 
to run on up the street and call on Colonel Cowles. 

“How is the old gentleman, anyway?” 

“His spirits,” said Sharlee, “were never better, and he is 
working like a horse. But I ’m afraid the dear is beginning 
to feel his years a little.” 

“He’s nearly seventy, you know. By the bye, what ever 
became of that young helper you and I unloaded on him 
last year — the queer little man with the queer little name?” 

Sharlee saw that President West had entirely forgotten 
their conversation six months before, when he had promised 
to protect this same young helper from Colonel Cowles and 
the Post directors. She smiled indulgently at this evidence 
of the absent-mindedness of the great. 

“ Became of him ! Why, you ’re going to make him regular 
assistant editor at your directors’ meeting next month.” 

“Are we, though! I had it in the back of my head that 
he was fired early in the summer.” 

“Well, you see, when he saw the axe descending, he pulled 
off a little revolution all by himself and all of a sudden 
learned to write. Make the Colonel tell you about it.” 

“I’m not surprised,” said West. “ I told you last winter, 
you know, that I believed in that boy. Great heavens ! It ’s 
glorious to be back in this old town again!” 

He went down the broad steps of the Capitol, and out 
the winding white walkway through the park. Nearly 
everybody he met stopped him with a friendly greeting and a 
welcome home. He walked the shady path with his light 
stick swinging, his eyes seeing, not an arch of tangible trees, 
but the shining vista which dreamers call the Future. . . . 
He stood upon a platform, fronting a vast white meadow 
of upturned faces. He was speaking to this meadow, his 
theme being “Education and the Rise of the Masses,” and 
the people, displaying an enthusiasm rare at lectures upon 


190 QUEED 

such topics, roared their approval as he shot at them great 
terse truths, the essence of wide reading and profound wis- 
dom put up in pellets of pungent epigram. He rose at a long 
dinner-table, so placed that as he stood his eye swept down 
rows upon rows of other long tables, where the diners had 
all pushed back their chairs to turn and look at him. His 
words were honeyed, of a magic compelling power, so that 
as he reached his peroration, aged magnates could not be 
restrained from producing fountain-pen and check-book; 
he saw them pushing aside coffee-cups to indite rows of o’s 
of staggering length. Blaines College now tenanted a new 
home on a grassy knoll outside the city. The single ram- 
shackle barn which had housed the institution prior to the 
coming of President West was replaced by a cluster of noble 
edifices of classic marble. The president sat in his handsome 
office, giving an audience to a delegation of world-famous 
professors from the University of Paris. They had been 
dispatched by the French nation to study his methods on 
the ground. 

“Why, hello , Colonel! Bless your heart, I am glad to see 
you, sir. . . .” 

Colonel Cowles, looking up from his ancient seat, gave 
an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. He welcomed the 
young man affectionately. West sat down, and once more 
pen-sketched his travels and his plans for Blaines College. 
He was making a second, or miniature, grand tour that 
afternoon, regreeting all his friends, and was thus com- 
pelled to tell his story many times; but his own interest in 
it appeared ever fresh. For Blaines he asked and was 
promised the kindly offices of the Post. 

The Colonel, in his turn, gave a brief account of his 
vacationless summer, of his daily work, of the progress of 
the Post's Policies. 

“ I hear,” said West, “ that that little scientist I made you 
a present of last year has made a ten-strike.” 

“Queed? An extraordinary thing,” said the Colonel, 
relighting his cigar. “ I was on the point of discharging him. 


QUEED xgx 

you remember, with the hearty approval of the directors. 
His stuff was dismal, abysmal, and hopeless. One day he 
turned around and began handing in stuff of a totally dif- 
ferent kind. First-rate, some of it. I thought at first that 
he must be hiring somebody to do it for him. Did you see 
the paper while you were away?” 

“ Very irregularly, I ’m sorry to say.” 

“ Quite on his own hook, the boy turned up one day with 
an article on the Centre Street ‘ mashers ’ that was a 
screamer. You know what that situation was — ” 

“Yes, yes.” 

“ I had for some time had it in mind to tackle it myself. 
The fact was that we were developing a class of boy 
Don Juans that were a black disgrace to the city. It was 
a rather unpleasant subject, but this young man handled 
it with much tact, as well as with surprising vigor and abih 
ity. His improvement seemed to date from right there. 
I encouraged him to follow up his first effort, and he wrote 
a strong series which attracted attention all through the 
State, and has already brought about decided improvement.” 

“Splendid! You know,” said West, “the first time I 
ever looked at that boy, I was sure he had the stuff in him.” 

“Then you are a far keener observer than I. However, 
the nature of the man seems to be undergoing some subtle 
change, a curious kind of expansion — I don’t remember 
anything like it in my experience. A more indefatigable 
worker I never saw, and if he goes on this way . . . Well, 
God moves in a mysterious way. It’s a delight to see you 
again, Gardiner. Take supper with me at the club, won’t 
you? I feel lonely and grown old, as the poet says.” 

West accepted, and presently departed on his happy 
round. The Colonel glanced at his watch; it was 3.30 
o’clock, and he fell industriously to work again. On the 
stroke of four, as usual, the door of the adjoining office 
opened, and he heard his assistant enter and seat himself 
at the new desk recently provided for him. Another half- 
hour passed, and the Colonel, putting a double cross-mark 


192 QUEED 

at the bottom of his paper— that being how you write 
“Finis” on the press — raised his head. 

“Mr. Queed.” 

“Yes.” 

The connecting door opened, and the young man walked 
in. His chief eyed him thoughtfully. 

“Young man, you have picked up a complexion like a 
professional beauty’s. What is your secret?” 

“I daresay it is exercise. I have just walked out to 
Kern’s Castle and back.” 

“H’m. Five miles if it’s a step.” 

“And a half. I do it — twice a week — in an hour and 
seven minutes.” 

The Colonel thought of his own over-rubicund cheek and 
sighed. “Well, whom or what do you wish to crucify to- 
morrow?” 

“I am at your orders there.” 

“Have you examined Deputy Clerk Folsom’s reply to 
Councilman Hannigan’s charge? What do you think of it?” 

“I think it puts Hannigan in a very awkward position.” 

“ I agree with you. Suppose you seek to show that to the 
city in half a column.” 

Queed bowed. “I may, perhaps, remind you, Colonel, 
of the meeting in New York to-morrow to prepare for the 
celebration of the Darwin centennial. If you desired I 
should be glad to prepare, apropos of this, a brief mono- 
graph telling in a light, popular way what Darwin did for 
the world.” 

“And what did Darwin do for the world?” 

The grave young man made a large grave gesture which 
indicated the immensity of Darwin’s doings for the world. 

“Which topic do you prefer to handle — Folsom on 
Hannigan, or what Darwin did for the world?” 

“I think,” said Queed, “that I should prefer to handk 
both.” 

“Ten people will read Hannigan to one who reads Dar 
win.” 


QUEED 193 

4< Don’t you think that it is the Post’s business to reduce 
that proportion?” 

Take them both,” said the Colonel presently. “But 
always remember this: the great People are more inter* 
ested in a cat-fight at the corner of Seventh and Centre 
Streets than they are in the greatest exploit of the greatest 
scientific theorist that ever lived.” 

“I will remember what you say, Colonel.” 

“I want you,” resumed Colonel Cowles, “to take supper 
with me at the club. Not to-night — I’m engaged. Shall 
we say to-morrow night, at seven?” 

Queed accepted without perceptible hesitation. Some 
time had passed since he became aware that the Colonel 
had somehow insinuated himself into that list of friends 
which had halted so long at Tim and Murphy Queed. Be- 
sides, he had a genuine, unscientific desire to see what a real 
club looked like inside. So far, his knowledge of clubs was 
absolutely confined to the Mercury Athletic Association, 
B. Klinker, President. 

The months of May, June, July, and August had risen 
and died since Queed, threshing out great questions through 
the still watches of the night, had resolved to give a modified 
scheme of life a tentative and experimental trial. He had 
kept this resolution, according to his wont. Probably his 
first liking for Colonel Cowles dated back to the very begin- 
ning of this period. It might be traced to the day when 
the precariously-placed assistant had submitted his initial 
article on the thesis his friend Buck had given him — the 
first article in all his life that the little Doctor had ever 
dipped warm out of human life. This momentous composi- 
tion he had brought and laid upon the Colonel’s desk, as 
usual ; but he did not follow his ancient custom by instantly 
vanishing toward the Scriptorium. Instead he stuck fast in 
the sanctum, not pretending to look at an encyclopedia or 
out of the window as another man might have done, but 
standing rigid on the other side of the table, gaze glued upon 
the perusing Colonel. Presently the old editor looked up. 


194 QUEED 

“Did you write this?” 

“Yes. Why not?” 

“It’s about as much like your usual style as my style is 
like Henry James’s.” 

“You don’t consider it a good editorial, then?” 

“You have not necessarily drawn the correct inference 
from my remark. I consider it an excellent editorial. In 
fact — I shall make it my leader to-morrow morning. But 
that has nothing to do with how you happen to be using a 
style exactly the reverse of your own.” 

Queed had heaved a great sigh. The article occupied three 
pages of copy-paper in a close handwriting, and repre- 
sented sixteen hours’ work. Its author had rewritten it 
eleven times, incessantly referring to his text-book, the files 
of the Post , and subjecting each phrase to the most gruelling 
examination before finally admitting it to the perfect 
structure. However, it seemed no use to bore one’s employer 
with details such as these. 

“ I have been doing a little studying of late — ” 

“Under excellent masters, it seems. Now this phrase, 
‘the ultimate reproach and the final infamy’” — the 
Colonel unconsciously smacked his lips over it — “why, 
sir, it sounds like one of my own.” 

Queed started. 

“If you must know, it is one of your own. You used it 
on October 26, 1900, during, as you will recall, the closing 
days of the presidential campaign.” 

The Colonel stared at him, bewildered. 

“I decided to learn editorial-writing — as the term is 
understood,” Queed reluctantly explained. “Therefore, I 
have been sitting up till two o’clock in the mornings, study- 
ing the files of the Post, to see exactly how you did it.” 

The Colonel’s gaze gradually softened. “You might have 
been worse employed; I compliment and congratulate you,” 
said he; and then added: “Whether you have really caught 
the idea and mastered the technique or not, it is too soon 
to say. But I ’ll say frankly that this article is worth more 


OUEED 195 

to me than everything else that you ’ve written for the Post 
put together.” 

“ I am — ahem — gratified that you are pleased with it.” 

The Colonel, whose glance had gone out of the window, 
swung around in his chair and smote the table a testy blow. 

“For the Lord’s sake,” he exploded, “get some heat in 
you ! Squirt some color into your way of looking at things ! 
Be kind and good-natured in your heart — just as I am at 
this moment — but for heaven’s sake learn to write as if 
you were mad, and only kept from yelling by phenomenal 
will-power.” 

This was in early May. Many other talks upon the art 
of editorial writing did the two have, as the days went. The 
Colonel, mystified but pleased by revelations of actuality 
and life in his heretofore too-embalmed assistant, found an 
increasing interest in developing him. Here was a youth, 
with the qualities of potential great valuableness, and the 
wise editor, as soon as this appeared, gave him his chance by 
calling him off the fields of taxation and currency and 
assigning him to topics plucked alive from the day’s news. 

On the fatal 15th of May, the Colonel told Queed merely 
that the Post desired his work as long as it showed such 
promise as it now showed. That was all the talk about the 
dismissal that ever took place between them. The Colonel 
was no believer in fulsome praise for the young. But to 
others he talked more freely, and this was how it happened 
that the daughter of his old friend John Randolph Weyland 
knew that Mr. Queed was slated for an early march up- 
stairs. 

For Queed the summer had been a swift and immensely 
busy one. To write editorials that have a relation with 
everyday life, it gradually became clear to him that the 
writer must himself have some such relation. In June the 
Mercury Athletic Association had been thoroughly re- 
organized and rejuvenated, and regular meets were held 
every Saturday night. At Trainer Klinker’s command, 
Queed had resolutely permitted himself to be inducted into 


196 QUEED 

the Mercury; moreover, he made it a point of honor to at- 
tend the Saturday night functions, where he had the ideal 
chance to match his physical competence against that of 
other men. Early in the sessions at the gymnasium, Buck 
had introduced his pupil to boxing-glove and punching-bag, 
his own special passions, and now his orders ran that the 
Doc should put on the gloves with any of the Mercuries that 
were willing. Most of the Mercuries were willing, and on 
these early Saturday nights, Stark’s rocked with the falls 
of Dr. Queed. But under Klinker’s stern discipline, he 
was already acquiring something like a form. By midsum- 
mer he had gained a small reputation for scientific precision 
buttressed by invincible inability to learn when he was 
licked, and autumn found many of the Mercuries decidedly 
less Barkis-like than of old. 

Queed lived now in the glow of perfect physical health, 
a very different thing, as Fifi had once pointed out, from 
merely not feeling sick. In the remarkable development that 
his body was undergoing, he had found an unexpected 
pride. But the Mercury, though he hardly realized it at 
the time, was useful to him in a bigger way than bodily 
improvement. 

Here he met young men who were most emphatically in 
touch with life. They treated him as an equal with refer- 
ence to his waxing muscular efficiency, and with sbme 
respect as regards his journalistic connection. “Want you 
to shake hands with the editor of the Post ,” so kindly Buck 
would introduce him. After the bouts or the “exhibition” 
of a Saturday, there was always a smoker, and in the highly 
instructed and expert talk of his club-mates the Doctor 
learned many things that were to be of value to him later 
on. Some of the Mercuries, besides their picturesque gen- 
eral knowledge, knew much more about city politics than 
ever got into the papers. There was Jimmy Wattrous, for 
example, already rising into fame as Plonny Neal’s most 
promising lieutenant. Jimmy bared his heart with the 
Mercuries, and was particularly friendly with the representa- 


QUEED 197 

tive of the great power which moulds public opinion. Now 
and then, Neal himself looked in, Plonny, the great boss, 
who was said to hold the city in the hollow of his hand. 
Many an editorial that surprised and pleased Colonel 
Cowles was born in that square room back of Stark’s. 

And all these things took time . . . took time . . . And 
there were nights when Queed woke wide-eyed with cold 
sweat on his brow and the cold fear in his heart that he 
and posterity were being cheated, that he was making an 
irretrievable and ghastly blunder. 

Desperate months were May, June, and July for the little 
Doctor. In all this time he never once put his own pencil 
to his own paper. Manuscript and Schedule lay locked 
together in a drawer, toward which he could never bear to 
glance. Thirteen hours a day he gave to the science of 
editorial writing ; two hours a day to the science of physcial 
culture; one hour a day (computed average) to the science 
of Human Intercourse; but to the Science of Sciences never 
an hour on never a day. The rest was food and sleep. Such 
was his life for three months ; a life that would have been 
too horrible to contemplate, had it not been that in all of 
his new sciences he uncovered a growing personal interest 
which kept him constantly astonished at himself. 

By the end of June he found it safe to give less and less 
time to the study of editorial paradigms, for he had the 
technique at his fingers’ ends ; and so he gave more and more 
time to the amassment of material. For he had made a mag- 
nificent boast, and he never had much idea of permitting it 
to turn out empty, for all his nights of torturing misgivings. 
He read enormously with expert facility and a beautifully 
trained memory; read history, biography, memoirs, war 
records, old newspapers, old speeches, councilmanic pro- 
ceedings, departmental reports — everything he could lay 
his hands on that promised capital for an editorial writer in 
that city and that State. By the end of July he felt that 
he could slacken up here, too, having pretty well exhausted 
the field, and the first day of August — red-letter day in 


198 QUEED 

the annals of science — saw him unlock the sacred drawer 
with a close-set face. And now the Schedule, so long lapsed, 
was reinstated, with Four Hours a Day segregated to Mag- 
num Opus. A pitiful little step at reconstruction, perhaps, 
but still a step. And henceforth every evening, between 
9.30 and 1.30, Dr. Queed sat alone in his Scriptorium and 
embraced his love. 

Insensibly summer faded into autumn, and still the science 
of Human Intercourse was faithfully practiced. The Payn- 
ter parlor knew Queed not infrequently in these days, where 
he could sometimesTe discovered not merely suffering, but 
encouraging, Major Brooke to talk to him of his victories 
over the Republicans in 1870-75. Nor was he a stranger 
to Nicolovius’s sitting-room, having made it an iron-clad 
rule with himself to accept one out of every two invitations 
to that charming cloister. After all, there might be some- 
thing to learn from both the Major’s fiery reminiscences 
and the old professor’s cultured talk. He himself, he found, 
tended naturally toward silence. Listeners appeared to be 
needed in a world where the supply of talkers exceeded the 
demand. The telling of humorous anecdote he had definitely 
excided from his creed. It did not appear needed of him ; and 
he was sure that the author of his creed would herself have 
authorized him to drop it. He never missed Fifi now, ac- 
cording to the way of this world, but he thought of her 
sometimes, which is all that anybody has a right to expect* 
Miss Weyland he had not seen since the day Fifi died. Mrs. 
Paynter had been away all summer, a firm spinster cousin 
coming in from the country to run the boarders, and the 
landlady’s agent came to the house no more. Buck Klinker 
he saw incessantly; he was the first person in the world, 
probably, that the little Doctor had ever really liked. It 
was Buck who suggested to his pupil, in October, a par- 
ticularly novel experience for his soul’s unfolding, which 
Queed, though failing to adopt it, sometimes dandled before 
his mind’s eye with a kind of horrified fascination, viz: the 
taking of Miss Miller to the picture shows. 


QUEED 199 

But the bulk of his time this autumn was still going to his 
work on the Post. With ever fresh wonderment, he faced 
the fact that this work, first taken up solely to finance the 
Scriptorium, and next enlarged to satisfy a most irrational 
instinct, was growing slowly but surely upon his personal 
interest. Certainly the application of a new science to a 
new set of practical conditions was stimulating to his intel- 
lect; the panorama of problems whipped out daily by the 
telegraph had a warmth and immediateness wanting to the 
abstractions of closet philosophy. Queed’s articles lacked 
the Colonel’s expert fluency, his loose but telling vividness, 
his faculty for broad satire which occasionally set the whole 
city laughing. On the other hand, they displayed an exact 
knowledge of fact, a breadth of study and outlook, and a 
habit of plumbing bottom on any and all subjects which 
critical minds found wanting in the Colonel’s delightful 
discourses. And nowadays the young man’s articles were 
constantly reaching a higher and higher level of readability. 
Not infrequently they attracted public comment, not only, 
indeed not oftenest, inside the State. Queed knew what it 
was to be quoted in that identical New York newspaper from 
whose pages, so popular for wrapping around pork chops, 
he had first picked out his letters. 

Of these things the honorable Post directors were not un- 
mindful. They met on October 10, and upon Colonel 
Cowles’s cordial recommendation, named Mr. Queed as- 
sistant editor of the Post at a salary of fifteen hundred dol- 
lars per annum. And Mr. Queed accepted the appointment 
without a moment’s hesitation. 

So far, then, the magnificent boast had been made good. 
The event fell on a Saturday. The Sunday was sunny, 
windy, and crisp. Free for the day and regardful of the ad- 
vantages of open-air pedes trianism, the new assistant editor 
put on his hat from the dinner-table and struck for the open 
country. He rambled far, over trails strange to him, and 
came up short, about 4.30 in the afternoon, in a grove of 
immemorial pines which he instantly remembered to have 
seen before. 


XVII 

A Remeeting in a Cemetery : the Unglassed Queed who loafed 
on Rustic Bridges ; of the Consequences of failing to tell a 
Lady that you hope to see her again soon. 

F I FI’S grave had long since lost its first terrible look of 
bare newness. Grass grew upon it in familiar ways. 
Rose-bushes that might have stood a lifetime nodded 
over it by night and by day. Already “the minute grey 
lichens, plate o’er plate,” were “softening down the crisp-cut 
name and date ” ; and the winds of winter and of summer blew 
over a little mound that had made itself at home in the 
still city of the dead. 

Green was the turf above Fifi, sweet the peacefulness of 
her little churchyard. Her cousin Sharlee, who had loved 
her well, disposed her flowers tenderly, and stood awhile in 
reverie of the sort which the surroundings so irresistibly 
invited. But the schedules of even electric car-lines are in- 
exorable; and presently she saw from a glance at her watch 
that she must turn her face back to the city of the living. 

On the little rustic bridge a hundred yards away, a man 
was standing, with rather the look of having stopped at just 
that minute. From a distance Sharlee’s glance swept him 
lightly; she saw that she did not know him; and not fancy- 
ing his frank stare, she drew near and stepped upon the 
bridge with a splendid unconsciousness of his presence. But 
just when she was safely by, her ears were astonished by 
his voice speaking her name. 

“How do you do, Miss Weyland?” 

She turned, surprised by a familiar note in the deep tones, 
looked, and — yes, there could be no doubt of it — it was — 
“Mr. Queed! Why, how do you do!” 

They shook hands. He removed his hat for the process,, 


QUEED 201 

doing it with a certain painstaking precision which betrayed 
want of familiarity with the engaging rite. 

“ I haven’t seen you fora long time,” said Sharlee brightly. 

The dear, old remark — the moss-covered remark that 
hung in the well! How on earth could we live without 
it? In behalf of Sharlee, however, some excuses can be 
urged ; for, remembering the way she had talked to Mr. 
Queed once on the general subject of failures, she found 
herself struggling against a most absurd sense of embarrass- 
ment. 

“No,” replied Queed, replacing his hat as though follow- 
ing from memory the diagram in a book of etiquette. He 
added, borrowing one of the Colonel’s favorite expressions, 
“I hope you are very well.” 

“Yes, indeed. . . . I’m so glad you spoke to me, for to 
tell you the truth, I never, never should have known you if 
you had n’t.” 

“You think that I’ve changed? Well,” said he, gravely, 
“I ought to have. You might say that I’ve given five 
months to it.” 

“You’ve changed enormously.” 

She examined with interest this new Mr. Queed who loafed 
on rustic bridges, five miles from a Sociology, and hailed 
passing ladies on his own motion. He appeared, indeed, 
decidedly altered. 

In the first place, he looked decidedly bigger, and, to come 
at once to the fact, he was. For Klinker’s marvelous exer- 
cises for all parts of the body had done more than add nine- 
teen pounds to his weight, and deepen his chest, and broaden 
his shoulders. They had pulled and tugged at the undevel- 
oped tissues until they had actually added a hard-won 
three-quarters of an inch to his height. The stoop was gone, 
and instead of appearing rather a small man, Mr. Queed 
now looked full middle-height or above. He wore a well- 
made suit of dark blue, topped by a correct derby. His hair 
was cut trim, his color was excellent, and, last miracle of all, 
he wore no spectacles. It was astonishing but true. The 


202 QUEED 

beautiful absence of these round disfigurements brought 
into new prominence a pair of grayish eyes which did not 
look so very professorial, after all. 

But what Sharlee liked best about this unglassed and 
unscienced Mr. Queed was his entire absence of any self- 
consciousness in regard to her. When he told her that Easter 
Monday night that he cheerfully took his turn on the psy- 
chological operating-table, anaesthetics barred, and no mercy 
asked or given, it appeared that he, alone among men, 
really meant it. 

Under the tiny bridge, a correspondingly tiny brook 
purled without surcease, its heart set upon somewhere find- 
ing the sea. Over their heads a glorious maple was taking off 
its coat of many colors in the wind. Sharlee put back a small 
hand into a large muff and said : — 

“At church this morning I saw Colonel Cowles. He 
told me about you. I don’t know how you look at it, but 
I think you’re a subject for the heartiest congratulations. 
So here are mine.” 

“The men at the Mercury were pleased, too,” mused Mr. 
Queed, looking out over the landscape. “Do you ever read 
my articles now?” 

“For many years,” said Sharlee, evasively, “I have al- 
ways read the Post from cover to cover. It’s been to me like 
those books you see in the advertisements and nowhere else. 
Grips the reader from the start, and she cannot lay it down 
till the last page is turned.” 

A brief smile appeared in the undisguised eyes. “ Do you 
notice any distinctions now between me and the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica?” 

“Unless you happen to refer to Lombroso or Buckle or 
Aristotle or Plato,” said Sharlee, not noticing the smile, “I 
never know whether it’s your article or Colonel Cowles’s. 
Do you mind walking on? It’s nearly time for my car.” 

“A year ago,” said he, “I certainly should not have 
liked that. I do now, since it means that I have succeeded 
in what I set out to do. I ’ve thought a good deal about 


OUEED 203 

that tired bricklayer this summer,” he went on, quite un- 
embarrassed. “By the way, I know one personally now: 
Timrod Burns, of the Mercury. Only I can’t say that \ 
ever saw Timmy tired.” 

Down the woodland path they passed side by side, headed 
for the little station known as Stop 1 1 . Sharlee was pleased 
that he had remembered about the bricklayer; she could 
have been persuaded that his remark was vaguely intended 
to convey some sort of thanks to her. But saying no more 
of this, she made it possible to introduce casually a reference 
to his vanished glasses. 

“Yes,” said he, “ I knocked them off the bureau and broke 
them one day. So I just let them go. They were rather 
striking-looking glasses, I always thought. I don't believe 
I ever saw another pair quite like them.” 

“ But,” said Sharlee, puzzled, “do you find that you can see 
perfectly well without them?” 

“ Oh, yes ; if anything, better.” He paused, and added with 
entire seriousness: “You see those spectacles, striking- 
looking as they were, were only window-glass. I bought 
them at a ten-cent store on Sixth Avenue when I was 
twelve years old.” 

“Oh! What made you do that?” 

“All the regulars at the Astor Library wore them. At the 
time it seemed to be the thing to do, and of course they 
soon became second nature to me. But I daresay no one 
ever had a sounder pair of eyes than I.” 

To Sharlee this seemed one of the most pathetic of all his 
confidences; she offered no comment. 

“You were in the churchyard,” stated Mr. Queed. “I 
was there just ahead of you. I was struck with that motto 
or text on the headstone, and shall look it up when I get 
home. I have been making a more careful study of your Bible 
tb*s autumn and have found it exceptionally interesting. 
Y^u, I suppose, subscribe to all the tenets of the Christian 
fSth?” 

Sharlee- hesitated. “I’m not sure that I can answer that 


204 QUEED 

with a direct yes, and I will not answer it with any sort oi 
no. So I ’ll say that I believe in them all, modified a little 
in places to satisfy my reason.” 

“Ah, they are subject to modification, then?” 

“Certainly. Are n’t you? Am not I? Whatever is alive 
is subject to modification. These doctrines,” said she, “are 
evolving because they have the principle of life in them.” 

“So you are an evolutionist?” 

“The expert in evolutionary sociology will hardly quarrd 
with me for that.” 

“The expert in evolutionary sociology deals with social 
organisms, nations, the human race. Your Bible deals with 
Smith, Brown, and Jones.” 

“Well, what are your organisms and nations but collec- 
tions of my Smiths, Browns, and Joneses? My Bible deals 
with individuals because there is nothing else to deal with. 
The individual conscience is the beginning of everything.” 

‘ 1 Ah ! So you would found your evolution of humanity upon 
the increasing operation of what you call conscience?” 

“Probably I would not give all the credit to what I call 
conscience. Probably I ’d give some of it to what I call in- 
tellect.” 

“ In that case you would almost certainly fall into a fatal 
error.” 

“Why, don’t you consider that the higher the intellectual 
development the higher the type?” 

“Suppose we go more slowly,” said Mr. Queed, intently 
plucking a dead bough from an overhanging young oak. 
“ How do you go about measuring a type? When you speak 
of a high type, exactly what do you mean?” 

“When I speak of a high type,” said Sharlee, who really 
did not know exactly what she meant, “ I will merely say 
that I mean a type that is high — lofty, you know — tower* 
wig over other types.” 

She flaunted a gloved hand to suggest infinite altitude. 

“You ought to mean,” he said patiently, “a type which 
most successfully sketches the civilization of the future, a 


QUEED 205 

type best fitted to dominate and survive. Now you have 
only to glance at history to see that intellectual supremacy 
is no guarantee whatever of such a type.” 

“Oh, Mr. Queed, I don’t know about that.” 

“ Then I will convince you,” said he. “Look at the French 
— the most brilliant nation intellectually among all the 
European peoples. Where are they in the race to-day? The 
evolutionist sees in them familiar symptoms of a retrogres- 
sion which rarely ends but in one way. Look at the Greeks. 
Every schoolboy knows that the Greeks were vastly the in- 
tellectual superiors of any dominant people of to-day. An 
anthropologist of standing assures us that the intellectual 
interval separating the Greek of the Periclean age from the 
modern Anglo-Saxon is as great as the interval between the 
Anglo-Saxon and the African savage. Point to a man alive 
to-day who is the intellectual peer of Aristotle, Plato, or 
Socrates. Yet where are the Greeks? What did their exalted 
intellectual equipment do to save them in the desperate 
struggle for the survival of the fittest? The Greeks of to-day 
are selling fruit at corner stands; Plato’s descendants shine 
the world’s shoes. They live to warn away the most casual 
evolutionist from the theory that intellectual supremacy 
necessarily means supremacy of type. Where, then, you may 
ask, does lie the principle of triumphant evolution? Here 
we stand at the innermost heart of every social scheme. 
Let us glance a moment,” said Mr. Queed, “at Man, as we 
see him first emerging from the dark hinterlands of history.” 

So, walking through the sweet autumn woods with the one 
girl he knew in all the world — barring only Miss Miller — 
Queed spoke heartily of the rise and fall of peoples and the 
destiny of man. Thus conversing, they came out of the woods 
and stood upon the platform of the rudimentary station. 

The line ran here on an elevation, disappearing in the 
curve of a heavy cut two hundred yards further north. In 
front the ground fell sharply and rolled out in a vast green 
meadow, almost treeless and level as a mill-pond. Far off 
on the horizon rose the blue haze of a range of foothills. 


206 QUEED 

upon which the falling sun momentarily stood, like a gold- 
piece edge-up on a table. Nearer, to their right, was a strip 
of uncleared woods, a rainbow of reds and pinks. Through 
the meadow ran a little stream, such as a boy of ten could 
leap; for the instant it stood fire-red under the sun. 

Sharlee, obtaining the floor for a moment, asked Queed 
how his own work had been going. He told her that in one 
sense it had not been going at all : not a chapter written from 
May to September. 

“However,” he said, with an unclouded face, “I am now 
giving six hours a day to it. And it is just as well to go slow. 
The smallest error of angle at the centre means a tremen- 
dous going astray at the circumference. I — ahem — do 
not feel that my summer has been wasted, by any means. 
You follow me? It is worth some delay to be doubly sure 
that I put down no plus signs as minuses.” 

“ Yes, of course. How beautiful that is out there, is n’t it? ” 

His eyes followed hers over the sunset spaces. “No, it is 
too quiet, too monotonous. If there must be scenery, let it 
have some originality and character. You yourself are very 
beautiful, I think.” 

Sharlee started, almost violently, and colored perceptibly. 
If a text-book in differential calculus, upon the turning of a 
page, had thrown problems to -the winds and begun gibber- 
ing purple poems of passion, she could not have been more 
completely taken aback. However, there was no mistaking 
the utter and veracious impersonality of his tone. 

“ Oh, do you think so? I ’m very glad, because I ’m afraid 
not many people do. ...” 

Mr. Queed remained silent. So far, so good; the conversa- 
tion stood in a position eminently and scientifically correct ; 
but Sharlee could not for the life of her forbear to add : “ But 
I had no idea you ever noticed people’s looks.” 

“So far as I remember, I never did before. I think it was 
the appearance of your eyes as you looked out over the plain 
that attracted my attention. Then, looking closer, I noticed 
that you are beautiful.” 


QUEED 207 

The compliment was so unique and perfect that another 
touch could only spoil it. Sharlee immediately changed the 
subject. 

“Oh, Mr. Queed, has the Department you or Colonel 
Cowles to thank for the editorial about the reformatory this 
morning?” 

“Both of us. He suggested it and I wrote it. So you 
really cannot tell us apart ? ” 

She shook her head. “All this winter we shall work pre- 
paring the State’s mind for this institution, convincing 
it so thoroughly that when the legislature meets again, it 
simply will not dare to refuse us. When I mention we and us, 
understand that I am speaking to you Departmentally. 
After that there are ten thousand other things that we 
want to do. But everything is so immortally slow! We are 
not allowed to raise our fingers without a hundred years’ war 
first. Don’t you ever wish for money — oceans and oceans 
of lovely money?” 

“Good heavens, no!” 

“I do. I’d pepper this State with institutions. Did you 
know,” she said sweetly, “that I once had quite a little pot 
of money? When I was one month old.” 

“Yes,” said Queed, “ I knew. In fact, I had not been here 
a week before I heard of Henry G. Surface. Major Brooke 
speaks of him constantly, Colonel Cowles occasionally. 
Do you,” he asked, “care much about that?” 

“Well,” said Sharlee, gently, “I’m glad my father never 
knew.” 

From half a mile away, behind the bellying woodland, a 
faint hoot served notice that the city-bound car was sweep- 
ing rapidly toward them. It was on the tip of Queed’s tongue 
to remind Miss Weyland that, in the case of Fifi, she had 
taken the ground that the dead did know what was going 
on upon earth. But he did not do so. The proud way in 
which she spoke of my father threw another thought upper- 
most in his mind. 

“Miss Weyland,” he said abruptly, “I made a — confi- 


208 QUEED 

dence to you, of a personal nature, the first time I ever talked 
with you. I did not, it is true, ask you to regard it as a con- 
fidence, but — ” 

“I know,” interrupted Sharlee, hurriedly. “ But of course 
I have regarded it in that way, and have never spoken of it 
to anybody.” 

“Thank you. That was what I wished to say.” 

If Sharlee had wanted to measure now the difference that 
she saw in Mr. Queed, she could have done it by the shyness 
that they both felt in approaching a topic they had once 
handled with the easiest simplicity. She was glad of his sen- 
sitiveness; it became him better than his early callousness. 
Sharlee wore a suit of black-and-gray pin-checks, and it was 
very excellently tailored ; for if she purchased but two suits 
a year, she invariably paid money to have them made by one 
who knew how. Her hat was of the kind that other girls 
study with cool diligence, while feigning engrossment in the 
conversation; and, repairing to their milliners, give orders 
for accurate copies of it. From it floated a silky-looking veil 
of gray-white, which gave her face that airy, cloud-like set- 
ting that photographers of the baser sort so passionately 
admire. The place was as windy as Troy; from far on the 
ringing plains the breeze raced and fell upon this veil, cease- 
lessly kicking it here and there, in a way that would have 
driven a strong man lunatic in seven minutes. Sharlee, 
though a slim girl and no stronger than another, remained 
entirely unconscious of the behavior of the veil; long fa- 
miliarity had bred contempt for its boisterous play ; and, with 
her eyes a thousand miles away, she was wishing with her 
whole heart that she dared ask Mr. Queed a question. 

Whereupon, like her marionette that she worked by a 
string, he opened his mouth and gravely answered her. 

“ I have three theories about my father. One is that he is 
an eccentric psychologist with peculiar, not to say extraor- 
dinary, ideas about the bringing up of children. Another is 
that because of his own convenience or circumstances, he 
does not care to own me as I am now. The third is that 


QUEED 209 

because of my convenience or circumstances, he thinks that 
I may not care to own him as he is now. I have never heard 
of or from him since the letter I showed you, nearly nine 
months ago. I rather incline to the opinion,” he said, “that 
my father is dead. ” 

“ If he is n’t,” said Sharlee, gently, as the great car whizzed 
up and stopped with a jerk, “I am very sure that you are 
to find him some day. If he had n’t meant that, he would 
never have asked you to come all the way from New York 
to settle here — do you think so?” 

“Do you know,” said Mr. Queed — so absorbedly as to 
leave her to clamber up the car steps without assistance — 
“if I subscribed to the tenets of your religion, I might be- 
lieve that my father was merely a mythical instrument of 
Providence — a tradition created out of air just to bring me 
down here .” 

“Why,” said Sharlee, looking down from the tall platform, 
as the car whizzed and buzzed and slowly started, “are n’t 
you coming ?” 

“No, I’m walking,” said Mr. Queed, and remembered at 
the last moment to pluck off his glistening new derby. 

Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, 
might never have met again in this world. Half a mile up 
the road, it came to the young man that their farewell had 
lacked that final word of ceremony to which he now aspired. 
To those who called at his office, to the men he met at the 
sign of the Mercury, even to Nicolovius when he betook 
himself from the lamplit sitting-room, it was his carefully 
attained habit to say: “I hope to see you again soon.” He 
meant the hope, with these, only in the most general and per- 
functory sense. Why, then, had he omitted this civil tag and 
postscript in his parting with Miss Weyland, to whom he 
could have said it — yes, certainly — with more than usual 
sincerity? Certainly; he really did hope to see her again 
soon. For she was an intelligent, sensible girl, and knew 
more about him than anybody in the world except Tim 
Queed. 


210 QUEED 

Gradually it was borne in upon him that the reason he had 
failed to tell Miss Weyland that he hoped to see her again 
soon was exactly the fact that he did hope to see her again 
soon. Off his guard for this reason, he had fallen into a 
serious lapse. Looking with untrained eyes into the future, 
he saw no way in which a man who had failed to tell a lady 
that he hoped to see her again soon was ever to retrieve his 
error. It was good-by, Charles Weyland, for sure. 

However, Miss Weyland herself resolved all these perplexi- 
ties by appearing at Mrs. Paynter’s supper- table before the 
month was out; and this exploit she repeated at least once, 
and maybe twice, during the swift winter that followed. 

On January 14, or February 23, or it might have been 
March 2, Queed unexpectedly reentered the dining-room, 
toward eight o’clock, with the grave announcement that he 
had a piece of news. Sharlee was alone in the room, conclud- 
ing the post-prandial chores with the laying of the Turkey- 
red cloth. She was in fickle vein this evening, as it chanced ; 
and instead of respectfully inquiring the nature of his tid- 
ings, as was naturally and properly expected of her, she re- 
ceived the young man with a fire of breezy inconsequentiali- 
ties which puzzled and annoyed him greatly. 

She admitted, without pressure, that she had been hoping 
for his return; had in fact been dawdling over the duties of 
the dining-room on that very expectation. From there her 
fancy grew. Audaciously she urged his reluctant attention 
to the number of her comings to Mrs. Paynter’s in recent 
months. With an exceedingly stagey counterfeit of a down- 
cast eye, she hinted at gossip lately arising from public obser- 
vation of these visits: gossip, namely, to the effect that Miss 
Weyland’s ostensible suppings with her aunt were neither 
better nor worse than so many bold calls upon Mr. Queed. 
Her lip quivered alarmingly over such a confession; un- 
doubtedly she looked enormously abashed. 

Mr. Queed, for his part, looked highly displeased and more 
than a shade uncomfortable. He annihilated all such fool- 


QUEED 21 1 

ishness by a look and a phrase; observed, in a stately open- 
ing, that she would hardly trouble to deny empty rumor of 
this sort, since — 

“I can’t deny it, you see! Because,” she interrupted, 
raising her eyes and turning upon him a sudden dazzling 
yet outrageous smile — “it ’s true” 

She skipped away, smiling to herself, happily putting 
things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in an- 
noyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an 
irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of averages claimed 
its innings. 

“While you are thinking up what to say,” she rattled 
on, “might I ask your advice on a sociological problem that 
was just laid before me by Laura?” 

“Well,” he said impatiently, “who is Laura?” 

“Laura is the loyal negress who cooks the food for Mrs. 
Paynter’s bright young men. Her husband first deserted her, 
next had the misfortune to get caught while burgling, and is 
at present doing time, as the saying is. Now a young 
bright-skin negro desires to marry Laura, and speaks in 
urgent tones of the divorce court. Her attitude is more than 
willing, but she learns that a divorce, at the lowest conceiv- 
able price, will cost fifteen dollars, and she had rather put 
the money in a suit and bonnet. But a thought no larger 
than a man’s hand has crossed her mind, and she said to me 
just now: ‘I ’dare, Miss Sharly, it do look like, when you 
got a beau and he want to marry you, and all the time axin’ 
and coaxin’ an’ beggin’ you to get a div-o’ce, it do look like 
he ought to pay for the div-o’ce.’ Now what answer has 
your old science to give to a real heart problem such as 
that?” 

“May I ask that you will put the napkins away, or at 
the least remain stationary? It is impossible for me to talk 
with you while you flutter about in this way.” 

At last she came and sat down meekly at the table, her 
hands clasped before her in rather a devotional attitude, 
while he, standing, fixed her with his unwavering gaze. 


212 QUEED 

“I speak to you,” he began, uncompromisingly, “as to 
Mrs. Paynter’s agent. Professor Nicolovius is going to move 
in the spring and take an apartment or small house. He has 
invited me to share such apartment or house with him.” 

“What! But you declined?” 

“On the contrary, I accepted at once.” 

Mrs. Paynter’s agent was much surprised and interested 
by this news, and said so. “But how in the world,” she went 
on, puzzled, “did you make him like you so? I always sup- 
posed that he hated everybody — he does me, I know.” 

“I believe he does hate everybody but me.” 

“Strange — extraordinary!” said Sharlee, picturing the 
two scholars alone together in their flat, endeavoring to 
soft-boil eggs on one of those little fixtures over the gas. 

“I can see nothing in the least extraordinary in the re- 
fusal of a cultured gentleman to hate me.” 

“I don’t mean it that way at all — not at all! But Pro- 
fessor Nicolovius must know cultured gentlemen, congenial 
roomers, who are nearer his own age — ” 

“Oh, not necessarily,” said Queed, and sat down in the 
chair by her, Major Brooke’s chair. “ He is a most unsocial 
sort of man,” — this from the little Doctor! — “and I doubt 
if he knows anybody better than he knows me. That he 
knows me so well is due solely to the fact that we have been 
forced on each other three times a day for over a year. For 
the first month or so after I came here, we remained entire 
strangers, I remember, and passed each other on the stairs 
without speaking. Gradually, however, he has come to take 
a great fancy to me.” 

“And is that why you are going off to a honeymoon cot- 
tage with him?” 

“Hardly. I am going because it will be the best sort of 
arrangement for me.” 

“Oh!” 

“I will pay, you see,” said Queed, “no more than I am 
paying here; for that matter, I have no doubt that I could 
beat him down to five dollars a week, if I cared to do so. 


QUEED 213 

In return I shall have decidedly greater comforts and con- 
veniences, far greater quiet and independence, and complete 
freedom from interruptions and intrusions. The arrange- 
ment will be a big gain in several ways for me.” 

“And have you taken a great fancy to Professor Nico- 
lovius, too?” 

“Oh, no! — not at all. But that has very little to do with 
it. At least he has the great gift of silence.” 

Sharlee looked at his absorbed face closely. She thought 
that his head in profile was very fine, though certainly his 
nose was too prominent for beauty. But what she was won- 
dering was whether the little Doctor had really changed so 
much after all. 

“Well,” said she, slowly, “I’m sorry you’re going.” 

“Sorry — why? It would appear to me that under the 
tenets of your religion you ought to be glad. You ought to 
Compliment me for going.” 

“I don’t find anything in the tenets of my religion that 
requires you to go off and room-keep with Professor Nico- 
lovius.” 

“You do not? It is a tremendous kindness to him, I as- 
sure you. To have a place of his own has long been his dream, 
he tells me; but he cannot afford it without the financial 
assistance I would give. Again, even if he could finance it, 
he would not venture to try it alone, because of his health. 
It appears that he is subject to some kind of attacks — 
heart, I suppose — and does not want to be alone. I have 
heard him walking his floor at 3 o’clock in the morning. Do 
you know anything about his life?” 

“No. Nothing.” 

“ I know everything.” 

He paused for her to ask him questions, that he might have 
the pleasure of refusing her. But instead of prying, Sharlee 
said: “Still I ’m sorry that you are going.” 

“Well? Why?” 

“Because,” said Sharlee. 

“Proceed.” 


214 QUEED 

“ Because I don’t like his eyes.” 

“The question, from your point of view,” said Mr. Queed, 
“ is a moral — not an optic one. These acts which confer ben- 
efits on others,” he continued, “so peculiarly commended 
by your religion, are conceived by it to work moral good to 
the doer. The eyes (which you use synecdochically to re- 
present the character) of the person to whom they are done, 
have nothing — ” 

“ Mr. Queed,” said Sharlee, briskly interrupting his exeget- 
ical words, “I believe you are going off with Professor 
Nicolovius chiefly because — you think he needs you!” 

He looked up sharply, much surprised and irritated. 
“That is absolutely foolish and absurd. I have nothing in 
the world to do with what Professor Nicolovius needs. You 
must always remember that I am not a subscriber to the 
tenets of your religion.” 

“It is not too late. I always remember that too.” 

“But I must say frankly that I am much surprised at the 
way you interpret those tenets. For if — ” 

“Oh, you should never have tested me on such a question! 
Don’t you see that I ’m the judge sitting in his or her own 
case? Two boarders gone at one swoop! How shall I break 
the news to Aunt Jennie?” 

He thought this over in silence and then said impatiently; 
“I’m sorry, but I do not feel that I can consider that 
phase of the matter.” 

“Certainly not.” 

“The arrangement between us is a strictly business one, 
based on mutual advantage, and to be terminated at will 
as the interests of either party dictates.” 

“Exactly.” 

He turned a sharp glance on her, and rose. Having risen 
he stood a moment, irresolute, frowning, troubled by a 
thought. Then he said, in an annoyed, nervous voice: — 

“ Look here, will it be a serious thing for your aunt to lose 
me?” 

The agent burst out laughing. He was surprised by her 


QUEED 215 

merriment; he could not guess that it covered her instan- 
taneous discovery that she liked him more than she would 
ever have thought possible. 

“While I’m on the other side — remember that,” said 
she, “I’m obliged to tell you that we can let the rooms any 
day at an hour’s notice. Not that the places of our two 
scholars can ever be filled, but the boarding-house business 
is booming these days. We are turning them away. Do you 
remember the night that you walked in here an hour late 
for supper, and I arose and collected twenty dollars from 
you?” 

“Oh, yes. ... By the way — I have never asked — 
whatever became of that extraordinary pleasure-dog of 
yours?” 

“Thank you. He is bigger and more pleasurable than 
ever. I take him out every afternoon, and each day, just as 
the clock strikes five, he knocks over a strange young man 
for me. It is delightful sport. But he has never found any 
young man that he enjoyed as heartily as he did you.” 

Gravely he moved toward the door. “ I must return to my 
work. You will tell your aunt I have given notice? Well — 
good-evening.” 

“ G00</-evening, Mr. Queed.” 

The door half shut upon him, but opened again to admit 
his head and shoulders. 

“By the way, there was a curious happening yesterday 
which might be of interest to you. Did you see it in the Post 
— a small item headed ‘ The Two Queeds ’ ? ” 

“Oh — no! About you and Tim?” 

“About Tim, but not about me. His beat was changed the 
other day, it seems, and early yesterday morning a bank in 
his new district was broken into. Tim went in and arrested 
the burglar after a desperate fight in the dark. When other 
policemen came and turned on the lights, Tim discovered to 
his horror that he had captured his brother Murphy.” 


XVIII 


Of President West of Old Blaines College , his Trustees and his 
Troubles; his Firmness in the Brown- Jones Hazing Incident 
so misconstrued by Malicious Asses; his Article for the Post , 
and why it was never printed: all ending in West's Profound 
Dissatisfaction with the Rewards of Patriotism. 

HE way of Blaines College was not wholly smooth that 



winter, and annoyances rose to fret the fine edge 


of President West’s virgin enthusiasms. The opening 
had been somewhat disappointing. True, there were more 
students than last year, the exact increment being nine. But 
West had hoped for an increase of fifty, and had communi- 
cated his expectations to the trustees, who were correspond- 
ingly let down when the actual figures — total enrolment, 
167 — were produced at the October meeting. The young 
president explained about the exasperating delays in getting 
out his advertising literature, but the trustees rather hemmed 
over the bills and said that that was a lot of money. And one 
of them bluntly called attention to the fact that the President 
had not assumed his duties till well along in September. 

West, with charming humility and good humor, asked in- 
dulgence for his inexperience. His mistake, he said, in 
giving an excess of time to the study of the great collegiate 
systems of the old world, if it was a mistake, was one that 
could hardly be repeated. Next year . . . 

“Meantime,” said the blunt trustee, “you’ve got a 
ten per cent increase in expenditures and but nine more 
stoodents.” 

“Let us not wholly forget,” said West, with his disarm- 
ing smile, “ my hope to add substantially to the endowment.” 

But he marked this trustee as one likely to give trouble 
in the future, and hence to be handled with care. He was 


QUEED 217 

a forthright, upstanding, lantern-jawed man of the people, 
by the name of James E. Winter. A contractor by profes- 
sion and a former member of the city council, he represented 
the city on the board of trustees. For the city appropriated 
seventy-five hundred dollars a year, for the use of the col- 
lege, and in return for this munificence, reserved the right 
to name three members of the board. 

Nor was Mr. Winter the only man of his kidney on that 
directorate. From his great friend among the trustees, Mr. 
Fyne, donator of the fifty thousand dollar endowment on 
which Blaines College partly subsisted, West learned that 
his election to the presidency had failed of being unanimous. 
In fact, the vote had stood seven to five, and the meeting 
at which he was chosen had at times approached violence. 
Of the five, two had voted against West because they thought 
that old Dr. Gilfillan’s resignation did not have that purely 
spontaneous character so desirable under the circumstances ; 
two because they did not think that West had the qualifica- 
tions, or would have the right point of view, for a people’s 
college; and one for all these reasons, or for any other reason, 
which is to say for personal reasons. This one, said Mr. 
Fyne, was James E. Winter. 

“ I know,” said West. “ He ’s never got over the poundings 
we used to give him in the Post when he trained with those 
grafters on the Council. He’d put poison in my tea on half 
a chance.” 

Unhappily, the sharp cleft made in the board at the time 
of the election survived and deepened. The trustees devel- 
oped a way of dividing seven to five on almost all of West’s 
recommendations which was anything but encouraging. 
An obstinate, but human, pride of opinion tended to keep 
the two factions facing each other intact, and matters very 
tiny in themselves served, as the weeks went by, to aggra- 
vate this feeling. Once, at least, before Christmas, it required 
all of West’s tact and good-humor to restore the appear- 
ance of harmony to a meeting which was fast growing ex- 
cited. 


2i8 QUEED 

But the young president would not allow himself to become 
discouraged. He earnestly intended to show James E. Win- 
ter which of the two knew most about running a modern 
institution of the higher learning. Only the perfectest bloom 
of his ardor faded under the constant handling of rough 
fingers. The interval separating Blaines College and the 
University of Paris began to loom larger than it had seemed 
in the halcyon summer-time, and the classic group of noble 
piles receded further and further into the prophetic haze. 
But West’s fine energy and optimism remained. And he 
continued to see in the college, unpromising though the out- 
look was in some respects, a real instrument for the uplift. 

The president sat up late on those evenings when social 
diversions did not claim his time, going over and over his 
faculty list with a critical eye, and always with profound 
disapproval. There were only three Ph.D.’s among them, 
and as a whole the average of attainment was below, rather 
than above, the middle grade. They were, he was obliged 
to admit, a lot of cheap men for a cheap college. With such 
a staff, a distinguished standard was clearly not to be hoped 
for. But what to do about it? His general idea during the 
summer had been mercilessly to weed out the weak brothers 
in the faculty, a few at a time, and fill their places with men 
of the first standing. But now a great obstacle presented 
itself. Men of the first standing demanded salaries of the 
first standing. Blaines College was not at present in position 
to pay such salaries. Obviously one of two courses remained. 
Either the elevation of the faculty must proceed in a very 
modest form, or else Blaines College must get in position 
to pay larger salaries. West decided to move in both direc- 
tions. 

There was one man on the staff that West objected to 
from the first faculty meeting. This was a man named 
Harkly Young, a youngish, tobacco-chewing fellow of lowly 
origin and unlessoned manners, who was “assistant profes- 
sor” of mathematics at a salary of one thousand dollars a 
year. Professor Young’s bearing and address did anything 


QUEED 219 

but meet the president’s idea of scholarliness ; and West had 
no difficulty in convincing himself of the man’s incompe- 
tence. Details came to his attention from time to time dur- 
ing the autumn which served to strengthen his snap-shot 
judgment, but he made the mistake, doubtless, of failing 
to communicate his dissatisfaction to Professor Young, and 
so giving him an inkling of impending disaster. West knew 
of just the man for this position, a brilliant young assistant 
superintendent of schools in another part of the state, who 
could be secured for the same salary. Eager to begin his 
house-cleaning and mark some definite progress, West hurled 
his bolt from the blue. About the middle of December he 
dispatched a letter to the doomed man notifying him that 
his services would not be required after the Christmas re- 
cess. 

Instead of accepting his dismissal in a quiet and gentle- 
manly way, and making of himself a glad thank-offering on 
the altar of scholarship, Professor Young had the poor taste 
to create an uproar. After satisfying himself in a stirring 
personal interview that the president’s letter was final, he 
departed in a fury, and brought suit against the college and 
Charles Gardiner West personally for his year’s salary. 
He insisted that he had been engaged for the full college 
year. To the court he represented that he was a married 
man with six children, and absolutely dependent upon his 
position for his livelihood. 

Professor Young happened to be very unpopular with both 
his colleagues and the students, and probably all felt that it 
was a case of good riddance, particularly as West’s new man 
rode rapidly into general popularity. These facts hampered 
the Winterites on the board, but nevertheless they made the 
most of the incident, affecting to believe that Young had 
been harshly treated. The issue, they intimated, was one 
of the classes against the masses. The Chronicle, the penny 
evening paper which found it profitable business to stand 
for the under-dog and “the masses,” scareheaded a jaundiced 
account of the affair, built up around an impassioned state- 


220 QUEED 

ment from Professor Young. The same issue carried an edi- 
torial entitled, “The Kid Glove College.” West laughed at 
the editorial, but he was a sensitive man to criticism and 
the sarcastic gibes wounded him. When the attorneys for 
the college advised a settlement out of court by paying the 
obstreperous Young three hundred dollars in cash, James 
Winter was outspoken in his remarks. A resolution re- 
straining the president from making any changes in the 
faculty, without the previous consent and approval of the 
board, was defeated, after warm discussion, by the margin 
of seven votes to five. 

“By the Lord, gentlemen,” said Mr. Fyne, indignantly, 
“if you cannot put any confidence in the discretion of your 
president, you’d better get one whose discretion you can 
put confidence in.” 

“That’s just what I say,” rejoined James E. Winter, 
with instant significance. 

Other changes in his faculty West decided to defer till the 
beginning of a new year. All his surplus energy should be 
concentrated, he decided, on raising an endowment fund 
which should put the college on a sound financial basis be- 
fore that time came. But here again he collided with the 
thick wall of trustee bigotry. 

In the city, despite his youth, he was already well known 
as a speaker, and was a favorite orator on agreeable occa« 
sions of a semi-public nature. This was a sort of prestige 
that was well worth cultivating. In the State, and even 
outside of it, he had many connections through various act- 
ivities, and by deft correspondence he easily put himself in 
line for such honors as they had to offer. Invitations to 
speak came rolling in in the most gratifying way. His plan 
was to mount upon these to invitations of an even higher 
class. In December he made a much admired address be- 
fore the Associated Progress Boards. The next month, 
through much subtle wire-pulling, he got himself put on the 
toast list at the annual banquet of the distinguished Amer- 
ican Society for the Promotion of the Higher Education. 


QUEED 221 

There his name met on equal terms with names as yet far 
better known. He spoke for ten minutes and sat down 
with the thrill of having surpassed himself. A famous fin- 
ancier who sat with him at the speaker’s table told him 
that his speech was the best of the evening, because the 
shortest, and asked several questions about Blaines Col- 
lege. The young President returned home in a fine glow, 
which the hostile trustees promptly subjected to a cold 
douche. 

“ I ’d like to inquire,” said James E. Winter, sombrely, at 
the January board meeting, “what is the point, if any, of 
the President of Blaines College trapesing all over the coun- 
try to attend these here banquets.” 

They used unacademic as well as plain language in the 
Blaines board meeting by this time. West smiled at Trustee 
Winter’s question. To him the man habitually seemed as 
malapropos as a spiteful old lady. 

“The point is, Mr. Winter, to get in touch with the sources 
of endowment funds. Blaines College on its present founda- 
tion cannot hope to compete with enlightened modern col- 
leges of from five to one hundred times its resources. If we 
mean to advance, we must do it by bringing Blaines favor- 
ably to the attention of philanthropists who — ” 

“No, sir! 1 ' roared Winter, bringing his contractor’s fist 
down thuddingly upon the long table. “Such noo-fangled 
ideas are against the traditions of old Blaines College, I 
say! Old Blaines College is not asking for alms. Old Blaines 
College is not a whining beggar, whatever those Yankee 
colleges may be. I say, gentlemen, it’s beneath the dignity 
of old Blaines College for its president to go about Noo York 
bowing and scraping and passing the hat to Rockyfeller, and 
such-like boocaneers.” 

To West’s unfeigned surprise, this view of the matter met 
with solid backing. Reminiscences of the “tainted money” 
controversy appeared in the trustees’ talk. “Subsidized 
education” was heard more than once. One spoke bitterly 
of Oil Colleges. No resolution was introduced, James E. 


222 QUEED 

Winter having inadvertently come unprepared, but the 
majority opinion was clearly that old Blaines College 
(founded 1894) should draw in her traditional skirts from 
the yellow flood then pouring over the country, and remain, 
small it may be, but superbly incorruptible. 

For once, West left his trustees thoroughly disgusted and 
out of humor. 

“Why, why are we doomed to this invincible hostility 
to a new idea?” he cried, in the bitterness of his soul. “ Here 
is the spirit of progress not merely beckoning to us, but 
fairly springing into our laps, and because it speaks in ac- 
cents that were unfamiliar to the slave patriarchy of a hun- 
dred years ago, we drag it outside the city and crucify it. I 
tell you these old Bourbons whom we call leaders are mill- 
stones around our necks, and we can never move an inch 
until we’ve laid the last one of them under the sod.” 

Sharlee Weyland, to whom he repeated this thought, 
though she was all sympathy with his difficulties, did not 
nevertheless think that this was quite fair. “Look,” she 
said, “at the tremendous progress we’ve made in the last 
ten years.” 

“Yes,” he flashed back at her, “and who can say that a 
state like Massachusetts, with the same incomparable op- 
portunities, would n’t have made ten times as much!” 

But he was the best-natured man alive, and his vexation 
soon faded. In a week, he was once more busy planning out 
ways and means. He sought funds in the metropolis no 
more, and the famous financier spared him the mortifica- 
tion of having to refuse a donation by considerately not of- 
fering one. But he continued to make addresses in the State, 
and in the city he was in frequent demand. However, the 
endowment fund remained obstinately immovable. By 
February there had been no additions, unless we can count 
five hundred dollars promised by dashing young Beverley 
Byrd on the somewhat whimsical condition that his brother 
Stewart would give an equal amount. 

“ Moreover,” said young Mr. Byrd, “ I ’ll increase it to seven 


QUEED 223 

hundred and fifty dollars if your friend Winter will publicly 
denounce me as a boocaneer. It’ll help me in my business 
to be lined up with Rockefeller and all those Ikes.” 

But this gift never materialized at all, for the reason that 
Stewart Byrd kindly but firmly refused to give anything. 
A rich vein of horse-sense underlay Byrd’s philanthropic 
enthusiasms ; and even the necessity for the continued 
existence of old Blaines College appeared to be by no 
means clear in his mind. 

“If you had a free hand, Gardiner,” said he, “ that would 
be one thing, but you have n’t. I ’ve had my eye on 
Blaines for a long time, and frankly I don’t think it is 
entitled to any assistance. You have an inferior plant and 
a lot of inferior men; a small college governed by small 
ideas and ridden by a close corporation of small trust- 
ees — ” 

“But heavens, man!” protested West, “your argu- 
ment makes a perfect circle. You won’t help Blaines be- 
cause it’s poorly equipped, and Blaines is poorly equipped 
because the yellow-rich — that ’s you — won’t help it.” 

Stewart Byrd wiped his gold-rimmed glasses, laughing 
pleasantly. He was the oldest of the four brothers, a man 
of authority at forty ; and West watched him with a 
secret admiration, not untouched by a flicker of envy. 

“What’s the answer? Blessed if I know! The fact is, 
old fellow, I think you ’ve got an utterly hopeless job there, 
and if I were you, I believe I ’d get ready to throw it over 
at the first opportunity.” 

West replied that it was only the hard things that were 
worth doing in this life. None the less, as winter drew to a 
close, he insensibly relaxed his efforts toward the immedi- 
ate exaltation of old Blaines. As he looked more closely 
into the situation, he realized that his too impetuous desire 
for results had driven him to waste energy in hopeless di- 
rections. How could he ever do anything, with a lot of moss- 
backed trustees tying his hands and feet every time he tried 
to toddle a step forward — he and Blaines? Clearly the 


224 QUEED 

first step of all was to oust the fossils who stood like rocks 
in the path of progress, and fill their places with men who 
could at least recognize a progressive idea when they were 
beaten across the nose with it. He studied his trustee list 
now more purposefully than he had ever pored over his 
faculty line up. By the early spring, he was ready to set 
subtle influences going looking to the defeat of the insurgent 
five, including James E. Winter, whose term happily expired 
on the first of January following. 

But the president’s lines did not all fall in gloomy and 
prickly places in these days. His perennial faculty for enjoy- 
ment never deserted him even in his darkest hours. His big 
red automobile, acquired on the crest of Semple and West’s 
prosperity, was constantly to be seen bowling down the 
street of an early-vernal afternoon, or dancing down far 
country lanes light with a load of two. The Thursday Ger- 
man had known him as of old, and many were the delight- 
ful dinners where he proved, by merit alone, the life of the 
party. Nor were his pleasures by any means all dissociated 
from Blaines College. The local prestige that the president 
acquired from his position was decidedly agreeable to him. 
Never an educational point arose in the life of the city or 
the nation but the Post carried a long interview giving Mr. 
West’s views upon it. Corner-stone laying afforded him a 
sincere joy. Even discussions with parents about their 
young hopefuls was anything but irksome to his buoyant 
nature. 

Best and pleasantest of all was his relation with the stu- 
dents. His notable gift for popularity, however futile it might 
be with embittered asses like James E. Winter, served him 
in good stead here. West could not conceal from himself 
that the boys idolized him. With secret delight he saw them 
copying his walk, his taste in waistcoats, the way he brushed 
back his hair. He had them in relays to his home to supper, 
skipping only those of too hopeless an uncouthness, and sent 
them home enchanted. He had introduced into the collegiate 
programme a five-minute prayer, held every morning at nine % 


QUEED 225 

at which he made brief addresses on some phase of college 
ideals every Tuesday and Friday. Attendance at these 
gatherings was optional, but it kept up in the most grati- 
fying way, and sometimes on a Friday the little assembly- 
room would be quite filled with the frankly admiring lads. 
“Why should I mind the little annoyances," would flash 
into his mind as he rose to speak, “when I can look down 
into a lot of fine, loyal young faces like this. Here is what 
counts.” His appearance at student gatherings was always 
attended by an ovation. He loved to hear the old Blaines 
cheer, with three ringing “Prexy’s” tacked on the end. One 
Saturday in early April, Prexy took Miss Avery to a base- 
ball game, somewhat against her will, solely that she might 
see how his students worshiped him. On the following 
Saturday, all with even-handed liberality, he took Miss 
Weyland to another base-ball game, with the same delightful 
purpose. 

The spring found West stronger and more contented with 
his lot as president of a jerkwater college, decidedly happier 
for the burning out of the fires of hot ambition which had 
consumed his soul six months earlier. He told himself that 
he was reconciled to a slow advance with fighting every inch 
of the way. But he saw the uselessness of fighting trustees 
who were doomed soon to fall, and resigned himself to a quiet, 
in fact a temporarily suspended, programme of progress. 
And then, just when everything seemed most comfortably 
serene, a new straw suddenly appeared in the wind, which 
quickly multiplied into a bundle and then a bale, and all at 
once the camel’s back had more than it could bear. April 
was hardly dead before the college world was in a turmoil, 
by the side of which the Young affair was the mere buzzing 
of a gnat. 

History is full of incidents of the kind : incidents which are 
trifling beyond mention in the beginning, but which malign 
circumstance distorts and magnifies till they set nations 
daggers-drawn at each other’s throats. Two students lured 
a “ freshman ” to their room and there invited him to drink a 


226 QUEED 

marvelous compound the beginnings of which were fat pork 
and olive oil ; this while standing on his head. The freshman 
did not feel in a position to deny their request. But his was 
a delicate stomach, and the result of his accommodating 
spirit was that he became violently, though not seriously, 
ill. Thus the matter came to the attention of his parents, 
and so to the college authorities. The sick lad stoutly de- 
clined to tell who were his persecutors, but West managed 
to track one of them down and summoned him to his office. 
We may call this student Brown; a pleasant-mannered youth 
of excellent family, whose sister West sometimes danced 
with at the Thursday German. Brown said that he had, 
indeed, been present during the sad affair, that he had, in 
fact, to his eternal humiliation and regret, aided and abetted 
it; but he delicately hinted that the prime responsibility 
rested on the shoulders of the other student. Rather un- 
wisely, perhaps, West pressed him to disclose the name of 
his collaborator. (Brown afterwards, to square himself 
with the students, alleged “intimidation.”) A youth whom 
we may describe as Jones was mentioned, and later, in the 
august private office, was invited to tell what he knew of the 
disorder. Henceforward accounts vary. Jones declared to 
the end that the president promised a light punishment for 
all concerned if he would make a clean breast. West as- 
serted — and who would doubt his statement? — that he 
had made no promise, or even a suggestion of a promise, 
of any kind. Be that as it may, Jones proceeded, though 
declining to mention any other name than his own. He 
declared positively that the idea of hazing the freshman had 
not originated with him, but that he had taken a culpable 
part in it, for which he was heartily sorry. Asked whether 
he considered himself or his colleague principally responsible 
for the injury to the freshman’s health, he said that he pre- 
ferred not to answer. To West this seemed a damaging 
admission, though perhaps not everybody would have so 
viewed it. He sent Jones away with no intimation of what 
he proposed to do. 


QUEED 227 

There was the situation, plain as a barn at noonday. All 
that was needed was tact, judgment, and a firm hand. The 
young president hesitated. Ordinarily he would have taken 
a quiet hour in the evening to think it all over carefully, but 
as it happened — like Lord George Germaine and the dis- 
patch to Burgoyne — social engagements rushed forward to 
occupy his time. Next morning his mail brought several 
letters, urging him to set his foot ruthlessly on the serpent' 
head of hazing. His telephone rang with the same firm coum 
sel. The Post, he saw, had a long leading article insisting that 
discipline must be maintained at all hazards. It was observed 
that this article thundered in the old Colonel’s best style, 
and this was the more noteworthy in that the article in ques- 
tion happened to be written by a young man of the name of 
Queed. 

West would have preferred to let the matter stand for a 
day or so, but he saw that prompt and decisive action was 
expected of him. Denying himself to callers, he shut himself 
in his office, to determine what was just and fair and right. 
The advice of his correspondents, and of the Post , tallied ex- 
actly with what the trustees had told him in the beginning 
about the traditions of old Blaines. Hazing was not to be 
tolerated under any circumstances. Therefore, somebody’s 
head would now have to fall. There could hardly be any 
occasion for expelling nice young Brown. For a minor consid- 
eration, it would be decidedly awkward henceforward, tohave 
to offer salt to Mrs. Brown at dinner, as he had done only last 
week, with the hand that had ruined her son’s career. Much 
more important, it seemed clear enough to West that the boy 
had only been weak, and had been tempted into misbehavior 
by his older and more wilful comrade. West had never liked 
young Jones. He was a rawboned, unkempt sprig of the 
masses, who had not been included in any of the student 
suppers at the president’s house. Jones’s refusal to speak out 
fully on all the details of the affair pointed strongly, so West 
argued, to consciousness of damning guilt. The path of ad- 
ministrative duty appeared plain. West, to say truth, had 


228 QUEED 

not at first expected to apply the drastic penalty of expulsion 
at all, but it was clear that this was what the city expected of 
him. The universal cry was for unshrinking firmness. Well, 
he would show them that he was firm, and shrank from no 
unpleasantness where his duty was concerned. Brown he 
ordered before him for a severe reprimand, and Jones he 
summarily dismissed from old Blaines College. 

These decrees went into effect at noon. At 4 o’clock in the 
afternoon the war-dogs broke their leashes. Four was the 
hour when the “ night ” edition of the Evening Chronicle came 
smoking hot from the presses. It appeared that young Jones 
was the son, not merely of a plumber, but of a plumber who 
was decidedly prominent in lodge circles and the smaller 
areas of politics. His case was therefore precisely the kind 
that the young men of the Chronicle loved to espouse. The 
three-column scare-head over their bitterly partisan “story” 
ran thus: 

POOR BOY KICKED OUT 
BY PRESIDENT WEST 

Close beside this, lest the reader should fail to grasp the 
full meaning of the boldface, was a three-column cartoon, 

* crudely drawn but adroit enough. It represented West, un- 
pleasantly caricatured, garbed in a swallow-tail coat and 
enormous white gloves, with a gardenia in his button-hole, 
engaged in booting a lad of singular nobility of countenance 
out of an open door. A tag around the lad’s neck described 
him as “The Workingman’s Son.” Under the devilish draw- 
ing ran a line which said, succinctly, “His Policies.” On 
page four was a double column, double-leaded editorial, 
liberal with capitals and entitled: “Justice in Silk Stockings.” 

But this was only a beginning. Next morning’s Post , 
which West had counted on to come to his assistance with a 
ringing leader, so earnestly discussed rotation of crops and 
the approaching gubernatorial campaign, that it had not a 
line for the little disturbance at the college. If this was a 


QUEED 229 

disappointment to West, a greater blow awaited him. Not 
to try to gloss over the mortifying circumstance, he was 
hissed when he entered the morning assembly — he, the 
prince, idol, and darling of his students. Though the room 
was full, the hissing was of small proportions, but rather 
too big to be ignored. West, after debating with himself 
whether or not he should notice it, made a graceful and manly 
two-minute talk which, he flattered himself, effectually 
abashed the lads who had so far forgotten themselves. 
None the less the demonstration cut him to the quick. 
When four o’clock came he found himself waiting for the ap- 
pearance of the Chronicle with an anxiety which he had never 
conceived possible with regard to that paper. A glance at 
its lurid front showed that the blatherskites had pounded 
him harder than ever. A black headline glared with the un- 
truth that President West had been “ Hissed by Entire 
Student Body.” Editorially, the Chronicle passionately in- 
quired whether the taxpayers enjoyed having the college 
which they so liberally supported (exact amount seventy- 
five hundred dollars a year) mismanaged in so gross a way. 

West put a laughing face upon these calumnies, but to 
himself he owned that he was deeply hurt. Dropping in at 
the club that night, he found a group of men, all his friends, 
eagerly discussing the shindig, as they called it. Joining in 
with that perfect good-humor and lack of false pride which 
was characteristic of him, he gathered that all of them 
thought he had made a mistake. It seemed to be considered 
that Brown had put himself in a bad light by trying to throw 
the blame on Jones. Jones, they said, should not have been 
bounced without Brown, and probably the best thing would 
have been not to bounce either. The irritating thing about 
this latter view was that it was exactly what West had 
thought in the first place, before pressure was applied to 
him. 

In the still watches of the night the young man was harried 
by uncertainties and tortured by stirring suspicions. Had 
he been fair to Jones, after all? Was his summary action in 


230 QUEED 

regard to that youth prompted in the faintest degree by 
personal dislike? Was he conceivably the kind of man who 
is capable of thinking one thing and doing another? The 
most afflicting of all doubts, doubt of himself, kept the 
young man tossing on his pillow for at least an hour. 

But he woke with a clear-cut decision singing in his mind 
and gladdening his morning. He would take Jones back. 
He would generously reinstate the youth, on the ground that 
the public mortification already put upon him was a sufficient 
punishment for his sins and abundant warning for others 
like-minded. This would settle all difficulties at one stroke 
and definitely lay the ghost of a disagreeable occurrence. 
The solution was so simple that he marvelled that he had 
not thought of it before. 

His morning’s mail, containing one or two very unpleasant 
letters, only strengthened his determination. He lost no 
time in carrying it out. By special messenger he dispatched 
a carefully written and kindly letter to Jones, Senior. Jones, 
Senior, tore it across the middle and returned it by the same 
messenger. He then informed the Chronicle what he had 
done. The Chronicle that afternoon shrieked it under a five- 
column head, together with a ferocious statement from Jones, 
Senior, saying that he would rather see his son breaking rocks 
in the road than a student in such a college as Blaines was, 
under the present regime. The editor, instead of seeing in 
West’s letter a spontaneous act of magnanimity in the in- 
terest of the academic uplift, maliciously twisted it into a 
grudging confession of error, “unrelieved by the grace of 
manly retraction and apology.” So ran the editorial, which 
was offensively headed “West’s Fatal Flop.” Some of the 
State papers, it seemed from excerpts printed in another 
column, were foolishly following the Chronicle's lead; Re- 
publican cracker-box orators were trying somehow to make 
capital of the thing; and altogether there was a very un- 
pleasant little mess, which showed signs of developing 
rapidly into what is known as an “issue.” 

That afternoon, when the tempest in the collegiate tea- 


QUEED 231 

pot was storming at its merriest, West, being downtown on 
private business, chanced to drop in at the Post office, ac- 
cording to his frequent habit. He found the sanctum under 
the guard of the young assistant editor. The Colonel, in fact, 
had been sick in bed for four days, and in his absence, Queed 
was acting-editor and sole contributor of the leaded minion. 
The two young men greeted each other pleasantly. 

“I’m reading you every day,” said West, presently, “and, 
flattery and all that aside, I ’ve been both surprised and 
delighted at the character of the work you’re doing. It’s 
fully up to the best traditions of the Post , and that strikes 
me as quite a feat for a man of your years.” 

Because he was pleased at this tribute, Queed answered 
briefly, and at once changed the subject. But he did it mala- 
droitly by expressing the hope that things were going well 
with Mr. West. 

“Well, not hardly,” said West, and gave his pleasant laugh. 
“You may possibly have noticed from our esteemed afternoon 
contemporary that I’m in a very pretty little pickle. But 
by the way,” he added, with entire good humor, “the Post 
does n’t appear to have noticed it after all.” 

“No,” said Queed, slowly, not pretending to misunder- 
stand. He hesitated, a rare thing with him. “The fact is I 
could not write what you would naturally wish to have 
written, and therefore I have n’t written anything at all.” 

West threw up his hands in mock horror. “Here’s an- 
other one! Come on, fellers! Kick him! — he’s got no 
friends! You know,” he laughed, “I remind myself of the 
man who stuck his head in at the teller’s window, wanting 
to have a check cashed. The teller didn’t know him from 
Adam. ‘Have you any friends here in the city?’ asked he. 
‘Lord, no!’ said the stranger; ‘I’m the weather man.’” 

Queed smiled. 

“And I was only trying in my poor way, ’’said West, mourn- 
fully, “to follow the advice that you, young man, roared at 
me for a column on the fatal morning.” 

“I’ve regretted that,” said Queed. “Though, of course, I 


232 QUEED 

never looked for any such developments as this. I was 
merely trying to act on Colonel Cowles’s advice about always 
playing up local topics. You are doubtless familiar with his 
dictum that the people are far more interested in a cat-fight 
at Seventh and Centre Streets than in the greatest exploits 
of science.” 

West laughed and rose to go. Then a good-natured thought 
struck him. “Look here,” said he, “this must be a great 
load, with the Colonel away — doing all of three columns a 
day by yourself. How on earth do you manage it?” 

“Well, I start work at eight o’clock in the morning.” 

“And what time does that get you through?” 

“Usually in time to get to press with it.” 

“Oh, I say! That won’t do at all. You’ll break yourself 
down, playing both ends against the middle like that. Let 
me help you out, won’t you? Let me do something for you 
right now?” 

“If you really feel like it,” said Queed, remembering how 
the Colonel welcomed Mr. West’s occasional contributions 
to his columns, “of course I shall be glad to have something 
from you.” 

“Why, my dear fellow, certainly! Hand me some copy- 
paper there, and go right on with your work while I unbosom 
my pent-up Uticas.” 

He meditated a moment, wrote rapidly for half an hour, 
and rose with a hurried glance at his watch. 

“Here’s a little squib about the college that may serve as 
a space-filler. I must fly for an engagement. I ’ll try to come 
down to-morrow afternoon anyway, and if you need any- 
thing to-night, ’phone me. Delighted to help you out.” 

Queed picked up the scattered sheets and read them over 
carefully. He found that Director West had written a very 
able defense, and whole-hearted endorsement, of President 
West’s position in the Blaines College hazing affair. 

The acting editor sat for some time in deep thought. 
Eighteen months’ increasing contact with Buck Klinker and 
other men of action had somewhat tamed his soaring self- 


QUEED 233 

sufficiency. He was not nearly so sure as he once was that 
he knew everything there was to know, and a little more be- 
sides. West, personally, whom he saw often, he had gradu- 
ally come to admire with warmth. By slow degrees it 
came to him that the popular young president had many 
qualities of a very desirable sort which he himself lacked. 
West’s opinion on a question of college discipline was likely 
to be at least as sound as his own. Moreover, West was one 
of the owners and managers of the Post. 

Nevertheless, he, Queed, did not see how he could accept 
and print this article. 

It was the old-school Colonel’s fundamental axiom, drilled 
into and fully adopted by his assistant, that the editor must 
be personally responsible for every word that appeared 
in his columns. Those columns, to be kept pure, must re- 
present nothing but the editor’s personal views. Therefore, 
on more than one occasion, the Colonel had refused point- 
blank to prepare articles which his directors wished printed. 
He always accompanied these refusals with his resignation, 
which the directors invariably returned to him, thereby 
abandoning their point. Queed was for the moment editor 
in the Colonel’s stead. Over the telephone, Colonel Cowles 
had instructed him, four days before, to assume full respon- 
sibility, communicating with him or with the directors if 
he was in doubt, but standing firmly on his own legs. As to 
where those legs now twitched to lead him, the young man 
could have no doubt. If he had a passion in his scientist’s 
bosom, it was for exact and unflinching veracity. Even to 
keep the Post silent had been something of a strain upon his 
instinct for truth, for a voice within him had whispered that 
an honest journal ought to have some opinion to express on 
a matter so locally interesting as this. To publish this edi- 
torial would strain the instinct to the breaking point and 
beyond. For it would be equivalent to saying, whether any- 
body else but him knew it or not, that'he, the present editor 
of the Post approved and endorsed West’s position, when the 
truth was that he did nothing of the sort. 


234 QTJEED 

At eight o’clock that night, he succeeded, after prolonged 
search of the town on the part of the switchboard boy, in 
getting West to the telephone. 

“Mr, West,” said Queed, “I am very sorry, but I don’t 
see how I can print your article.” 

“Oh, Lord! ” came West’s untroubled voice back over the 
wire. “And a man’s enemies shall be those of his own house- 
hold. What’s wrong with it, Mr. Editor?” 

Queed explained his reluctances. “If that is not satis- 
factory to you,” he added, at the end, “as it hardly can be, 
I give you my resignation now, and you yourself can take 
charge immediately.” 

“Bless your heart, no! Put it in the waste-basket. It 
doesn’t make a kopeck’s worth of difference. Here’s a 
thought, though. Do you approve of the tactics of those 
Chronicle fellows in the matter?” 

“No, I do not.” 

“Well, why not show them up to-morrow?” 

“I’ll be glad to do it.” 

So Queed wrote a stinging little article of a couple of sticks’ 
length, holding up to public scorn journalistic redshirts who 
curry-combed the masses, and preached class hatred for the 
money there was in it. It is doubtful if this article helped 
matters much. For the shameless Chronicle seized on it as 
showing that the Post had tried to defend the president, 
and utterly failed. “ Even the West organ,” so ran its brazen 
capitals, “ does not dare endorse its darling. And no wonder, 
after the storm of indignation aroused by the Chronicle's 
fearless exposures.” 

West kept his good humor and self-control intact, but it 
was hardly to be expected that he enjoyed venomous mis- 
representation of this sort. The solidest comfort he got in 
these days came from Sharlee Weyland, who did not read 
the Chronicle , and was most beautifully confident that what- 
ever he had done was right. But after all, the counselings of 
Miss Avery, of whom he also saw much that spring, better 
suited his disgruntled humor. 


QUEED 235 

“They are incapable of appreciating you,” said she, a 
siren in the red motor. “You owe it to yourself to enter a 
larger field. And” — so ran the languorous voice — “to 
your friends.” 

The trustees met on Saturday, with the Chronicle still 
pounding away' with deadly regularity. Its editorial of the 
afternoon before was entitled, “We Want A College President 
— Not A Class President,” and had frankly urged the trus- 
tees of old Blaines to consider whether a change of admin- 
istration was not advisable. This was advice which some 
of the trustees were only too ready to follow. James E. 
Winter, coming ;armed cap-a-pie to the meeting, suggested 
that Mr. West withdraw for a time, which Mr. West pro- 
perly declined to do. The implacable insurgent there- 
upon launched into a bitter face-to-face denunciation of 
the president’s conduct in the hazing affair, outpacing the 
Chronicle by intimating, too plainly for courtesy, that the 
president’s conduct toward Jones was characterized by 
duplicity, if not wanting in consistent adherence to veracity. 
“I had a hard time to keep from hitting him,” said West 
afterwards, “but I knew that would be the worst thing 
I could possibly do.” “Maybe so,” sighed Mr. Fyne, appar- 
ently not with full conviction. Winter went too far in mov- 
ing that the president’s continuance in office was prejudicial 
to the welfare of Blaines College, and was defeated 9 to 3. 
Nevertheless, West always looked back at this meeting as 
one of the most unpleasant incidents in his life. He flung 
out of it humiliated, angry, and thoroughly sick at heart. 

West saw himself as a persecuted patriot, who had laid a 
costly oblation on the altar of public spirit only to see the base 
crowd jostle forward and spit upon it. He was poor in this 
world’s goods. It had cost him five thousand a year to 
accept the presidency of Blaines College. And this was how 
they rewarded him. To him, as he sat long in his office brood- 
ing upon the darkness of life, there came a visitor, a tall, 
angular, twinkling-eyed, slow-speaking individual who per- 
petually chewed an unlighted cigar. He was Plonny Neal, no 


236 QUEED 

other, the reputed great chieftain of city politics. Once the 
Post , in an article inspired by West, had referred to Plonny 
as “this notorious grafter.” Plonny could hardly have con- 
sidered this courteous ; but he was a man who never remem- 
bered a grudge, until ready to pay it back with compound 
interest. West’s adolescent passion for the immediate 
reform of politics had long since softened, and nowadays 
when the whirligig of affairs threw the two men together, as 
it did not infrequently, they met on the easiest and friend- 
liest terms. West liked Plonny, as everybody did, and of 
Plonny’s sincere liking for him he never had the slightest 
doubt. 

In fact, Mr. Neal’s present call was to report that the man- 
ner in which a lady brushes a midge from her summering 
brow was no simpler than the wiping of James E. Winter off 
the board of Blaines College. 

That topic being disposed of, West introduced another. 

“Noticed the way the Chronicle is jumping on me with all 
four feet, Plonny?” he asked, with rather a forced laugh. 
“Why can’t those fellows forget it and leave me alone?” 

By a slow facial manoeuvre, Mr. Neal contrived to make 
his cigar look out upon the world with contemptuousness 
unbearable. 

“Why, nobody pays no attention to them fellers* wind, 
Mr. West. You could buy them off for a hundred dollars, 
ten dollars down, and have them praising you three times 
a week for two hundred dollars, twenty-five dollars down. 
I only take the paper,” said Mr. Neal, “because their Sun- 
day is mighty convenient f’r packin’ furniture f’r shipment.” 

The Chronicle was the only paper Mr. Neal ever thought of 
reading, and this was how he stabbed it in the back. 

“I don’t want to butt in, Mr. West, ’’said he, rising, “and 
you can stop me if I am, but as a friend of yours — why are 
you botherin’ yourself at all with this here kid’s-size pro- 
position?” 

“What kid’s-size proposition?” 

“This little two-by-twice grammar school that tries to 


QUEED 237 

pass itself off for a college. And you ain’t even boss of it at 
that! You got a gang of mossbacks sitting on your head who 
don’t get a live idea among ’em wunst a year. Why, the arch* 
angel Gabriel would n’t have a show with a lot of corpses 
like them! Of course it ain’t my business to give advice to a 
man like you, and I ’m probably offendin’ you sayin’ this, 
but someway you don’t seem to see what’s so plain to 
everybody else. It’s your modesty keeps you blind, I guess. 
But here’s what I don’t see: why don’t you come out of this 
little hole in the ground and get in line?” 

“In line?” 

“You’re dead and buried here. Now you mention the 
Evening Windbag that nobody pays no more attention to 
than kids yelling in the street. How about having a paper 
of your own some day, to express your own ideas and get 
things done, big things, the way you want ’em?” 

“You mean the Post?” 

“Well, the editor of the Post certainly would be in line, 
whereas the president of Blaines Grammar School certainly 
ain’t.” 

“What do you mean by in line, Plonny?” 

Mr. Neal invested his cigar with an enigmatic significance. 
“I might mean one thing and I might mean another. I 
s’pose you never give a thought to poltix, did you?” 

“Well, in a general way I have thought of it sometimes.” 

“Think of it some more,” said Mr. Neal, from the door. 
“I see a kind of shake-up cornin’. People say I’ve got in- 
floonce in poltix, and sort of help to run things. Of course 
it ain’t so. I ’ve got no more infloonce than what my ballot 
gives me, and my takin’ an intelligent public interest in 
what’s goin’ on. But it looks to an amatoor like the people 
are gettin’ tired of this ring-rule they been givin’ us, and ’re 
goin’ to rise in their majesty pretty soon, and fill the offices 
with young progressive men who never heeled f’r the or- 
ganization.” 

He went away, leaving the young president of Blaines 
vastly cheered. Certainly no language could have made 


238 QUEED 

Neal’s meaning any plainer. He had come to tell West that, 
if he would only consent to get in line, he, great Neal, de- 
sired to put him in high office — doubtless the Mayoralty, 
which in all human probability meant the Governorship 
four years later. 

West sat long in rapt meditation. He marveled at him- 
self for having ever accepted his present position. Its lim- 
itations were so narrow and so palpable, its possibilities were 
so restricted, its complacent provincialism so glaring, that 
the imaginative glories with which he had once enwrapped 
it seemed now simply grotesque. As long as he remained, 
he was an entombed nonentity. Beyond the college walls, 
out of the reach of the contemptible bigotry of the trustees 
of this world, the people were calling for him. He could be 
the new type of public servant, the clean, strong, fearless, 
idolized young Moses, predestined to lead a tired people 
into the promised land of political purity. Once more a 
white meadow of eager faces rolled out before the eye of his 
mind ; and this time, from the buntinged hustings, he did 
not extol learning with classic periods, but excoriated polit- 
ical dishonesty in red-hot phrases which jerked the throngs 
to their feet, frenzied with ardor. . . . 

And it was while he was still in this vein of thought, as it 
happened, that Colonel Cowles, at eleven o’clock on the first 
night of June, dropped dead in his bathroom, and left the 
Post without an editor. 


XIX 


The Little House on Duke of Gloucester Street; and the Begin*, 
ning of Various Feelings , Sensibilities , and Attitudes between 
two Lonely Men. 

NE instant thought the news of the Colonel’s death 



struck from nearly everybody’s mind : He 'll miss the 


Reunion. For within a few days the city was to wit- 
ness that yearly gathering of broken armies which, of all as- 
semblages among men, the Colonel had loved most dearly. 
In thirty years, he had not missed one, till now. They buried 
the old warrior with pomp and circumstance, not to speak of 
many tears, and his young assistant in the sanctum came 
home from the graveside with a sense of having lost a valued 
counselor and friend. Only the home to which the assistant 
returned with this feeling was not the Third Hall Back of 
Mrs. Paynter’s, sometimes known as the Scriptorium, but a 
whole suite of pleasant rooms, upstairs and down, in a nice 
little house on Duke of Gloucester Street. For Nicolovius 
had made his contemplated move on the first of May, and 
Queed had gone with him. 

It was half-past six o’clock on a pretty summer’s evening. 
Queed opened the house-door with a latch-key and went up- 
stairs to the comfortable living-room, which faithfully re- 
produced the old professor’s sitting-room at Mrs. Payn- 
ter’s. Nicolovius, in his black silk cap, was sitting near the 
open window, reading and smoking a strong cigarette. 

“Ah, here you are! I was just thinking that you were 
rather later than usual this evening.” 

“Yes, I went to Colonel Cowles’s funeral. It was decidedly 
impressive.” 


Queed dropped down into one of Nicolovius’s agreeable 


240 QUEED 

chairs and let his eyes roam over the room. He was ex- 
tremely comfortable in this house ; a little too comfortable, he 
was beginning to think now, considering that he paid but seven 
dollars and fifty cents a week towards its support. He had a desk 
and lamp all his own in the living-room, a table and lamp in 
his bedroom, ease and independence over two floors. An 
old negro man looked after the two gentlemen and gave 
them excellent things to eat. The house was an old one, and 
small; it was in an unfashionable part of town, and having 
stood empty for some time, could be had for thirty-five dollars 
a month. However, Nicolovius had wiped out any economy 
here by spending his money freely to repair and beautify. 
He had had workmen in the house for a month, papering, 
painting, plumbing, and altering. 

“Dozens of people could not get in the church,” said 
Queed. “They stood outside in the street till the service 
was over.” 

Nicolovius was looking out of the window, and answered 
casually. “I daresay he was an excellent man according to 
his lights.” 

“Coming to know him very well in the past year, I 
found that his lights stood high.” 

“As high, I am sure, as the environment in which he was 
born and raised made possible.” 

“You have a low opinion, then, of ante-bellum civilization 
in the South?” 

“Who that knows his history could have otherwise?” 

“You know history, I admit,” said Queed, lightly falling 
upon the side issue, “surprisingly, indeed, considering that 
you have not read it for so many years.” 

“A man is not likely to forget truths burned into him when 
he is young.” 

“Everything depends,” said Queed, returning to his 
muttons, “upon how you are going to appraise a civiliza- 
tion. If the only true measure is economic efficiency, no one 
can question that the old Southern system was one of the 
worst ever conceived.” 


QUEED 241 

“Can you, expert upon organized society as you are, ad- 
mit any doubts upon that point?” 

“I am admitting doubts upon a good many points these 
days.” 

Nicolovius resumed his cigarette. Talk languished. Both 
men enjoyed a good silence. Many a supper they ate through 
without a word. The old man’s attitude toward the young 
one was charming. He had sloughed off some of the too 
polished blandness of his manner, and now offered a simpler 
meeting ground of naturalness and kindliness. They had 
shared the Duke of Gloucester Street roof-tree for a month, 
but Queed did not yet accept it as a matter of course. He 
was decidedly more prone to be analytical than he had been 
a year ago. Yet whatever could be urged against it, the little 
house was in one way making a subtle tug upon his regard * 
it was the nearest thing to a home that he had ever had in his 
life, or was ever likely to have. 

“And when will the Post directors meet to choose his suc- 
cessor?” 

“I haven’t heard. Very soon, I should think.” 

“ It is certain, I suppose,” said Nicolovius, “that they will 
name you?” 

“Oh, not at all — by no means! I am merely receptive, 
that is all.” 

Queed glanced at his watch and rose. “There is hali 
an hour before supper, I see. I think I must turn it to ac' 
count.” 

Nicolovius looked regretful. “Why not allow yourself this 
minute’s rest, and me the pleasure of your society?” 

Queed hesitated. “No — I think my duty is to my work.” 

He passed into the adjoining room, which was his bed- 
room, and shut the door. Here at his table, he passed all 
of the hours that he spent in the house, except after supper, 
when he did his work in the sitting-room with Nicolovius. 
He felt that, in honor, he owed some companionship, of the 
body at least, to the old man in exchange for the run of the 
house, and his evenings were his conscientious concession 


242 QUEED 

to his social duty. But sometimes he felt the surprising and 
wholly irrational impulse to concede more, to give the old 
man a larger measure of society than he was, so to say, 
paying for. He felt it now as he seated himself methodically 
and opened his table drawer. 

From a purely selfish point of view, which was the only 
point of view from which such a compact need be considered, 
he could hardly think that his new domestic arrangement 
was a success. Greater comforts he had, of course, but it 
is not upon comforts that the world’s work hangs. The 
important facts were that he was paying as much as he 
had paid at Mrs. Paynter’s, and was enjoying rather less 
privacy. He and Nicolovius were friends of convenience 
only. Yet somehow the old professor managed to obtrude 
himself perpetually upon his consciousness. The young man 
began to feel an annoying sense of personal responsibility 
toward him, an impulse which his reason rejected utterly. 

He was aware that, personally, he wished himself back at 
Mrs. Paynter’s and the Scriptorium. A free man, in pos- 
session of this knowledge, would immediately pack up and 
return. But that was just the trouble. He who had always, 
hitherto, been the freest man in the world, appeared no 
longer to be free. He was aware that he would find it 
very difficult to walk into the sitting-room at this moment, 
and tell Nicolovius that he was going to leave. The old 
man would probably make a scene. The irritating thing 
about it was that Nicolovius, being as solitary in the great 
world as he himself, actually minded his isolation, and was 
apparently coming to depend upon him. 

But after all, he was contented here, and his work was 
prospering largely. The days of his preparation for his Post 
labors were definitely over. He no longer had to read or study ; 
he stood upon his feet, and carried his editorial qualifica- 
tions under his hat. His duties as assistant editor occupied 
him but four or five hours a day; some three hours a day — 
the allotment was inexact, for the Schedule had lost its 
first rigid precision — to the Sciences of Physical Cul- 


QUEED 243 

ture and Human Intercourse; all the rest to the Science 
of Sciences. Glorious mornings, and hardly less glorious 
nights, he gave, day after day, week after week, to the great 
book; and because of his astonishingly enhanced vitality, 
he made one hour tell now as an hour and a half had told in 
the period of the establishment of the Scriptorium. 

And now, without warning and prematurely, the jade 
Fortune had pitched a bomb at this new Revised Schedule 
of his, leaving him to decide whether he would patch up the 
pieces or not. And he had decided that he would not patch 
them up. Colonel Cowles was dead. The directors of the 
Post might choose him to succeed the Colonel, or they might 
not. But if they did choose him, he had finally made up his 
mind that he would accept the election. 

In his attitude toward the newspaper, Queed was some- 
thing like those eminent fellow-scientists of his who have set 
out to “expose” spiritualism and “the occult,” and have 
ended as the most gullible customers of the most dubious 
of “mediums.” The idea of being editor for its own sake, 
which he had once jeered and flouted, he had gradually 
come to consider with large respect. The work drew him 
amazingly ; it was applied science of a peculiarly fascinating 
sort. And in the six days of the Colonel’s illness in May, 
when he had full charge of the editorial page — and again 
now — he had an exhilarating consciousness of personal 
power which lured him, oddly, more than any sensation he 
had ever had in his life. 

No inducements of this sort, alone, could ever have drawn 
him from his love. However, his love was safe, in any case. 
If they made him editor, they would give him an assistant. 
He would keep his mornings for himself — four hours a 
day. In the long vigil last night, he had threshed the whole 
thing out. On a four-hour schedule he could finish his book 
in four years and a half more: — an unprecedentedly early 
age to have completed so monumental a work. And who 
could say that in thus making haste slowly, he would not 
have acquired a breadth of outlook, and closer knowledge 


244 QTJEED 

of the practical conditions of life, which would be advan- 
tageously reflected in the Magnum Opus itself? 

The young man sat at his table, the sheaf of yellow sheets 
which made up the chapter he was now working on ready 
under his hand. Around him were his reference books, his 
note-books, his pencils and erasers, all the neat parapher- 
nalia of his trade. Everything was in order; yet he touched 
none of them. Presently his eyes fell upon his open watch, 
and his mind went off into new channels, or rather into old 
channels which he thought he had abandoned for this half- 
hour at any rate. In five minutes more, he put away his 
manuscript, picked up his watch, and strolled back into the 
sitting-room. 

Nicolovius was sitting where he had left him, except that 
now he was not reading but merely staring out of the win- 
dow. He glanced around with a look of pleased surprise and 
welcome. 

“Ah-h! Did genius fail to burn?” he asked, employing a 
bromidic phrase which Queed particularly detested. 

“That is one way of putting it, I suppose.” 

“Or did you take pity on my solitariness? You must not 
let me become a drag upon you.” 

Queed, dropping into a chair, rather out of humor, made no 
reply. Nicolovius continued to look out of the window. 

“I see in the Post ,” he presently began again, “that 
Colonel Cowles, after getting quite well, broke himself down 
again in preparing for the so-called Reunion. It seems rather 
hard to have to give one’s life for such a rabble of beggars.” 

“That is how you regard the veterans, is it?” 

“Have you ever seen the outfit?” 

“Never.” 

“ I have lived here long enough to learn something of them. 
Look at them for yourself next week. Mix with them. Talk 
with them. You will find them worth a study — and worth 
nothing else under the sun.” 

“I have been looking forward to doing something of that 
sort,” said Queed, introspectively. 


QUEED 245 

Had not Miss Weyland, the last time he had seen her 
— namely, one evening about two months before, — ex- 
pressly invited him to come and witness the Reunion 
parade from her piazza? 

“You will see,” said Nicolovius, in his purring voice, “a 
iiot of shabby old men, outside and in, who never did an 
honest day’s work in their lives.” 

He paused, finished his cigarette and suavely resumed: 

“They went to war as young men, because it promised to 
be more exciting than pushing a plow over a worn-out hill- 
side. Or because there was nothing else to do. Or because 
they were conscripted and kicked into it. They came out 
of the war the most invincible grafters in history. The shift- 
less boor of a stable-boy found himself transformed into a 
shining hero, and he meant to lie back and live on it for the 
rest of his days. Be assured that he understood very well the 
cash value of his old uniform. If he had a peg-leg or an 
empty sleeve, so much the more impudently could he pass 
around his property cap. For forty years, he and his men- 
dicant band have been a cursed albatross hung around the 
necks of their honest fellows. Able-bodied men, they have 
lolled back and eaten up millions of dollars, belonging to a 
State which they pretend to love and which, as they well know, 
has needed every penny for the desperate struggle of exist- 
ence. Since the political party which dominates this State is 
too cowardly to tell them to go to work or go to the devil, 
it will be a God’s mercy when the last one of them is in his 
grave. You may take my word for that.” 

But Queed, being a scientist by passion, never took any- 
body’s word for anything. He always went to the original 
sources of information, and found out for himself. It was a 
year now since he had begun saturating himself in the annals 
of the State and the South, and he had scoured the field so 
effectually that Colonel Cowles himself had been known to 
appeal to him on a point of history, though the Colonel had 
forty years’ start on him, and had himself helped to make 
that history. 


246 OUEED 

Therefore Queed knew that Nicolovius, by taking the case 
of one soldier in ten, perhaps, or twenty or fifty, and offering 
it as typical of the whole, was bitterly caricaturing history; 
and he wondered why in the world the old man cared to do it. 

“My own reading of the recent history of the South, ” 
said Queed, “can hardly sustain such a view.” 

“You have only to read further to be convinced.” 

“But I thought you yourself never read recent history.” 

Nicolovius flung him a sharp look, which the young man, 
staring thoughtfully at the floor, missed. The old professor 
laughed. 

“My dear boy! I read it on the lips of Major Brooke, I 
read it daily in the newspapers, I read it in such articles as 
your Colonel Cowles wrote about this very Reunion. I can- 
not get away from history in the making, if I would. Ah, 
there is the supper bell — I’m quite ready for it, too. Let 
us go down.” 

They went down arm in arm. On the stairs Nicolovius 
said: “These Southern manifestations interest me because, 
though extreme, they are after all so absurdly typical of hu- 
man nature. I have even seen the same sort of thing in my 
own land.” 

Queed, though he knew the history of Ireland very well, 
could not recall any parallel to the United Confederate 
Veterans in the annals of that country. Still, a man capable 
of distorting history as Nicolovius distorted it could always 
find a parallel to anything anywhere. 

When the meal was about half over, Queed said : — 

“You slept badly last night, did n’t you?” 

“Yes — my old enemy. The attack soon passed. How- 
ever, you may be sure that it is a comfort at such times to 
know that I am not alone.” 

“If you should need any — ahem — assistance, I assume 
that you will call me,” said Queed, after a pause. 

“Thank you. You can hardly realize what your presence 
here, your companionship and, I hope I may say, your 
friendship, mean to me.” 


OUEED 247 

Queed glanced at him over the table, and hastily turned 
his glance away. He had surprised Nicolovius looking at 
him with a curiously tender look in his black diamond eyes. 

The young man went to the office that night, worried by 
two highly irritating ideas. One was that Nicolovius was 
most unjustifiably permitting himself to become dependent 
upon him. The other was that it was very peculiar that 
a Fenian refugee should care to express slanderous views 
of the soldiers of a Lost Cause. Both thoughts, once intro- 
duced into the young man’s mind, obstinately stuck there. 


XX 


Meeting of the Post Directors to elect a Successor to Colonel 
Cowles ; Charles Gardiner West's Sensible Remarks on Mr. 
Queed; Mr. West's Resignation from Old Blaines College , 
and New Consecration to the Uplift. 



'HE Post directors gathered in special meeting oi> 


Monday. Their first act was to adopt some beauti- 


A ful resolutions, prepared by Charles Gardiner West, in 
memory of the editor who had served the paper so long and 
so well. Next they changed the organization of the staff, 
splitting the late Colonel’s heavy duties in two, by creating 
the separate position of managing editor; this official to 
have complete authority over the news department of the 
paper, as the editor had over its editorial page. The directors 
named Evan Montague, the able city editor of the Post , to 
fill the new position, while promoting the strongest of the 
reporters to fill the city desk. 

The chairman, Stewart Byrd, then announced that he 
was ready to receive nominations for, or hear discussion 
about, the editorship. 

One of the directors, Mr. Hopkins, observed that, as he 
viewed it, the directors should not feel restricted to local 
timber in the choice of a successor to the Colonel. He said 
that the growing importance of the Post entitled it to an 
editor of the first ability, and that the directors should find 
such a one, whether in New York, or Boston, or San Fran- 
cisco. 

Another director, Mr. Boggs, remarked that it did not 
necessarily follow that a thoroughly suitable man must be 
a New York, Boston, or San Francisco man. Unless he was 
greatly deceived, there was an eminently suitable man, not 
merely in the city, but in the office of the Post , where, since 


QUEED 249 

Colonel Cowles’s death, he was doing fourteen hours of ex- 
cellent work per day for the sum of fifteen hundred dollars 
per annum. 

“Mr. Boggs’s point,” said Mr. Hickok, a third director, 
who looked something like James E. Winter, “is exceedingly 
well taken. A United States Senator from a Northern State 
is a guest in my house for Reunion week. The Senator reads 
the editorials in the Post with marked attention, has asked 
me the name of the writer, and has commended some of his 
utterances most highly. The Senator tells me that he never 
reads the editorials in his own paper — a Boston paper, 
Mr. Hopkins, by the bye — his reason being that they are 
never worth reading.” 

Mr. Shorter and Mr. Porter, fourth and fifth directors, 
were much struck with Mr. Hickok’s statement. They 
averred that they had made a point of reading the Post 
editorials during the Colonel’s absence, with a view to sizing 
up the assistant, and had been highly pleased with the char- 
acter of his work. 

Mr. Wilmerding, a sixth director, declared that the Colonel 
had, in recent months, more than once remarked to him that 
the young man was entirely qualified to be his successor. 
In fact, the Colonel had once said that he meant to retire 
before a great while, and, of course with the directors’ ap- 
proval, turn over the editorial helm to the assistant. There- 
fore, he, Mr. Wilmerding, had pleasure in nominating Mr. 
Queed for the position of editor of the Post. 

Mr. Shorter and Mr. Porter said that they had pleasure 
in seconding this nomination. 

Mr. Charles Gardiner West, a seventh director, was 
recognized for a few remarks. Mr. West expressed his in- 
tense gratification over what had been said in eulogy of 
Mr. Queed. This gratification, some might argue, was not 
wholly disinterested, since it was Mr. West who had dis- 
covered Mr. Queed and sent him to the Post. To praise the 
able editor was therefore to praise the alert, watchful, and 
discriminating director. ^Smiles.) Seriously, Mr. Queed’s 


250 QUEED 

work, especially during the last few months, had been of the 
highest order, and Mr. West, having worked beside him more 
than once, ventured to say that he appreciated his valuable 
qualities better than any other director. If the Colonel 
had but lived a year or two longer, there could not, in his 
opinion, be the smallest question as to what step the honor- 
able directors should now take. But as it was, Mr. West, as 
Mr. Queed’s original sponsor on the Post , felt it his duty to 
call attention to two things. The first was the young man’s 
extreme youth. The second was the fact that he was a 
stranger to the State, having lived there less than two years. 
At his present rate of progress, it was of course patent to any 
observer that he was a potential editor of the Post , and a great 
one. But might it not be, on the whole, desirable — Mr. West 
merely suggested the idea in the most tentative way, and 
wholly out of his sense of sponsorship for Mr. Queed — to 
give him a little longer chance to grow and broaden and 
learn, before throwing the highest responsibility and the 
final honors upon him? 

Mr. West’s graceful and sensible remarks made a distinct 
impression upon the directors, and Mr. Hopkins took occa- 
sion to say that it was precisely such thoughts as these that 
had led him to suggest looking abroad for a man. Mr. Shorter 
and Mr. Porter asserted that they would deprecate doing 
anything that Mr. West, with his closer knowledge of actual 
conditions, thought premature. Mr. Boggs admitted that 
the ability to write editorials of the first order was not all 
that should be required of the editor of the Post. It might 
be doubtful, thought he, whether so young a man could 
represent the Post properly on occasions of a semi-public 
nature, or in emergency situations such as occasionally 
arose in an editorial office. 

Mr. Wilmerding inquired the young man’s age, and upon 
being told that he was under twenty-six, remarked that only 
very exceptional abilities could counteract such youth as 
that. 

“That,” said Mr. Hickok, glancing cursorily at Charles 


QUEED 251 

Gardiner West, “is exactly the sort of abilities Mr. Queed 
possesses.” 

Discussion flagged. The chairman asked if they were 
ready for a vote upon Mr. Queed. 

“No, no — let’s take our time,” said Mr. Wilmerding. 
“Perhaps somebody has other nominations to offer.” 

No one seemed to have other nominations to offer. Some 
minutes were consumed by random suggestions and unpro- 
gressive recommendations. Busy directors began to look 
at their watches. 

“Look here, Gard — I mean Mr. West,” suddenly said 
young Theodore Fyne, the baby of the board. “Why 
couldn’t we persuade you to take the editorship? . . . Re- 
sign from the college, you know?” 

“Now you have said something!” cried Mr. Hopkins, en- 
thusiastically. 

Mr. West, by a word and a gesture, indicated that the 
suggestion was preposterous and the conversation highly 
unwelcome. 

But it was obvious that young Mr. Fyne’s suggestion had 
caught the directors at sight. Mr. Shorter and Mr. Porter 
affirmed that they had not ventured to hope, etc., etc., but 
that if Mr. West could be induced to consider the position, no 
choice would appear to them so eminently — etc. , etc. So said 
Mr. Boggs. So said Messrs. Hopkins, Fyne, and Wilmerding. 

Mr. Hickok, the director who resembled James E. Winter, 
looked out of the window. 

Mr. West, obviously restive under these tributes, was con- 
strained to state his position more fully. For more than one 
reason which should be evident, he said, the mention of his 
name in this connection was most embarrassing and dis- 
tasteful to him. While thanking the directors heartily for 
their evidences of good-will, he therefore begged them to 
desist, and proceed with the discussion of other candidates. 

“In that case,” said Mr. Hickok, “it appears to be the 
reluctant duty of the nominator to withdraw Mr. West’s 
name.” 


252 QUEED 

But the brilliant young man’s name, once thrown into the 
arena, could no more be withdrawn than the fisherman of 
legend could restore the genie to the bottle, or Pandora get 
her pretty gifts back into the box again. There was the idea, 
fairly out and vastly alluring. The kindly directors pressed 
it home. No doubt they, as well as Plonny Neal, appreciated 
that Blaines College did not give the young man a fair field 
for his talents ; and certainly they knew with admiration the 
articles with which he sometimes adorned the columns of 
their paper. Of all the directors, they now pointed out, he 
had stood closest to Colonel Cowles, and was most familiar 
with the traditions and policies of the Post. Their urgings 
increased in force and persistence; perhaps they felt en- 
couraged by a certain want of finality in the young man’s 
tone ; and at length West was compelled to make yet another 
statement. 

He was, he explained, utterly disconcerted at the turn the 
discussion had taken, and found the situation so embarrass- 
ing that he must ask his friends, the directors, to extricate 
him from it at once. The editorship of the Post was an office 
which he, personally, had never aspired to, but it would be 
presumption for him to deny that he regarded it as a post 
which would reflect honor upon any one. He was willing to 
admit, in this confidential circle, moreover, that he had taken 
up college work chiefly with the ambition of assisting Blaines 
over a critical year or two in its history, and that, to put it 
only generally, he was not indefinitely bound to his present 
position. But under the present circumstances, as he said, 
he could not consent to any discussion of his name; and 
unless the directors would agree to drop him from further 
consideration, which he earnestly preferred, he must reluct- 
antly suggest adjournment. 

“An interregnum,” said Mr. Hickok, looking out of the 
window, “is an unsatisfactory, not to say a dangerous 
thing. Would it not be better, since we are gathered for 
that purpose, to take decisive action to-day?” 

“ What is your pleasure, gentlemen ? ” inquired Chairman 
Byrd. 


QUEED 253 

Mr. Hickok was easily overruled. The directors seized 
eagerly on Mr. West’s suggestion. On motion of Mr. Hop- 
kins, seconded by Mr. Shorter and Mr. Porter, the meeting 
stood adjourned to the third day following at noon. 

On the second day following the Post carried the inter- 
esting announcement that Mr. West had resigned from the 
presidency of Blaines College, a bit of news which his friends 
read with sincere pleasure. The account of the occurrence 
gave one to understand that all Mr. West’s well-known per- 
suasiveness had been needed to force the trustees to accept 
his resignation. And when James E. Winter read this part 
of it, at his suburban breakfast, he first laughed, and then 
swore. The same issue of the Post carried an editorial, men- 
tioning in rather a sketchy way the benefits Mr. West had 
conferred upon Blaines College, and paying a high and confi- 
dent tribute to his qualities as a citizen. The young acting- 
editor, who never wrote what he did not think, had taken 
much pains with this editorial, especially the sketchy part. 
Of course the pestiferous Chronicle took an entirely different 
view of the situation. “The Chronicle has won its great 
fight,” so it nervily said, “against classism in Blaines Col- 
lege.” And it had the vicious taste to add : “Nothing in Mr. 
West’s presidential life became him like the leaving of it.” 

On the third day the directors met again. With char- 
acteristic delicacy of feeling, West remained away from the 
meeting. However, Mr. Hopkins, who seemed to know what 
he was talking about, at once expressed his conviction that 
they might safely proceed to the business which had brought 
them together. 

“Perceiving clearly that I represent a minority view,” 
said Mr. Hickok, “I request the director who nominated 
Mr. Queed to withdraw his name. I think it proper that 
our action should be unanimous. But I will say, frankly, that 
if Mr. Queed ’s name remains before the board, I shall vote 
for him, since I consider him from every point of view the 
man for the position.” 

Mr. Queed’s name having been duly withdrawn, the di- 


254 QUEED 

rectors unanimously elected Charles Gardiner West to the 
editorship of the Post . By a special resolution introduced by 
Mr. Hopkins, they thanked Mr. Queed for his able con- 
duct of the editorial page in the absence of the editor, and 
voted him an increased honorarium of eighteen hundred 
dollars a year. 

The directors adjourned, and Mr. Hickok stalked out, 
looking more like James E. Winter than ever. The other 
directors, however, looked highly gratified at themselves. 
They went out heartily congratulating each other. B y clever 
work they had secured for their paper the services of one 
of the ablest, most gifted, most polished and popular young 
men in the State. Nevertheless, though they never knew 
it, their action was decidedly displeasing to at least one faith- 
ful reader of the Post , to wit, Miss Charlotte Lee Weyland, 
of the Department of Charities. Sharlee felt strongly that 
Mr. Queed should have had the editorship, then and there. 
It might be said that she had trained him up for exactly that 
position. Of course, Mr. West, her very good friend, would 
make an editor of the first order. But, with all the flocks 
that roamed upon his horizon, ought he to have reached out 
and plucked the one ewe lamb of the poor assistant? Be- 
sides, she thought that Mr. West ought to have remained 
at Blaines College. 

But how could she maintain this attitude of criticism when 
the new editor himself, bursting in upon her little parlor 
in a golden nimbus of optimism, radiant good humor and 
success, showed up the shallowness and the injustice of it? 

“To have that college off my neck — Whew! I’m as 
happy, my friend, as a schoolboy on the first day of vaca- 
tion. I have n’t talked much about it to you,” continued 
Mr. West, “ for it’s a bore to listen to other people’s troubles 
- — but that college had become a perfect old man of the sea ! 
The relief is glorious ! I ’m bursting with energy and enthu- 
siasm and big plans for the Post.” 

“And Mr. Queed?” said Sharlee. “Was he much dis- 
appointed?” 


QUEED 255 

West was a little surprised at the question, but he gathered 
from her tone that she thought Mr. Queed had some right 
to be. 

“Why, I think not,” he answered, decisively. “Why in 
the world should he be? Of course it means only a delay of 
a year or two for him, at the most. I betray no confidence 
when I tell you that I do not expect to remain editor of the 
Post forever.” 

Sharlee appeared struck by this summary of the situa- 
tion, which, to tell the truth, had never occurred to her. 
Therefore, West went on to sketch it more in detail to her. 

“The last thing in the world that I would do,” said he, 
“is to stand in that boy’s light. My one wish is to push him 
to the front just as fast as he can stride. Why, I discovered 
Queed — you and I did, that is — and I think I may claim 
to have done something toward training him. To speak 
quite frankly, the situation was this: In spite of his great 
abilities, he is still very young and inexperienced. Give him 
a couple of years in which to grow and broaden and get 
his bearings more fully, and he will be the very best man in 
sight for the place. On the other hand, if he were thrust 
prematurely into great responsibility, he would be almost 
certain to make some serious error, some fatal break, which 
would impair his usefulness, and perhaps ruin it forever. 
Do you see my point? As his sponsor on the Post , it seemed 
to me unwise and unfair to expose him to the risks of forcing 
his pace. That ’s the whole story. I ’m not the king at all. 
I ’m only the regent during the king’s minority.” 

Sharlee now saw how unjust she had been, to listen to the 
small whisper of doubt of West’s entire magnanimity. 

“You are much wiser and farther-sighted than I.” 

“Perish the thought!” 

“I’m glad my little Doctor — only he is n’t either little 
or very much of a doctor any more — has such a good friend 
at court.” 

“Nonsense. It was only what anybody who stopped to 
think a moment would have done.” 


256 QUEED 

“Not everybody who stops to think is so generous. . . 

This thought, too, Mr. West abolished by a word. 

“But you will like the work, won’t you!” continued Shar- 
lee, still self-reproachful. “I do hope you will.” 

“I shall like it immensely,” said West, above pretending, 
as some regents would have done, that he was martyring 
himself for his friend, the king. “Where can you find any 
bigger or nobler work? At Blaines College of blessed mem- 
ory, the best I could hope for was to reach and influence a 
handful of lumpish boys. How tremendously broader is the 
opportunity on the Post ! Think of having a following of 
a hundred thousand readers a day! (You allow three or 
four readers to a copy, you know.) Think of talking every 
morning to such an audience as that, preaching progress 
and high ideals, courage and honesty and kindness and 
faith — moulding their opinions and beliefs, their ambi- 
tions, their very habits of thought, as I think they ought 
to be moulded. ...” 

He talked in about this vein till eleven o’clock, and Sharlee 
listened with sincere admiration. Nevertheless, he left her 
still troubled by a faint doubt as to how Mr. Queed himself 
felt about what had been done for his larger good. But when 
she next saw Queed, only a few days later, this doubt in- 
stantly dissolved and vanished. She had never seen him less 
inclined to indict the world and his fortune. 


XXI 

Queed sits on the Steps with Sharlee , and sees Some Old Soldiers 
go marching by. 

F AR as the eye could see, either way, the street was two 
parallels of packed humanity. Both sidewalks, up and 
down, were loaded to capacity and spilling off surplus 
down the side-streets. Navigation was next to impossible; 
as for crossing you were a madman to think of such a thing. 
At the sidewalks’ edge policemen patrolled up and down 
in the street with their incessant cry of ‘‘Back there!” — 
pausing now and then to dislodge small boys from trees, 
whither they had climbed at enormous peril to themselves 
and innocent by-standers. Bunting, flags, streamers were 
everywhere; now and then a floral arch bearing words of wel- 
come spanned the roadway ; circus day in a small town was 
not a dot upon the atmosphere of thrilled expectancy so 
all -pervasive here. It was, in fact, the crowning occasion 
of the Confederate Reunion, and the fading remnants of Lee’s 
armies were about to pass in annual parade and review. 

Mrs. Weyland’s house stood full on the line of march. It 
was the house she had come to as a bride ; she owned it ; and 
because it could not easily be converted over her head into 
negotiable funds, it had escaped the predacious clutches of 
Henry G. Surface. After the crash, it would doubtless have 
been sensible to sell it and take something cheaper; but sen- 
timent made her cling to this house, and her daughter, 
in time, went to work to uphold sentiment’s hands. It was 
not a large house, or a fine one, but it did have a very com- 
fortable little porch. To-day this porch was beautifully 
decorated, like the whole town, with the colors of two coun- 
tries, one living and one dead ; and the decorations for the 
dead were three times greater than the decorations for the 


25B QUEED 

living. And why not? Yet, at that, Sharlee was liberal- 
minded and a thorough-going nationalist. On some houses { 
the decorations for the dead were five times greater, like 
Benjamin’s mess; on others, ten times; on yet others, nc 
colors at all floated but the beloved Stars and Bars. 

Upon the steps of Mrs. Weyland’s porch sat Mr. Queed, 
come by special invitation of Mrs. Weyland’s daughter to 
witness the parade. 

The porch, being so convenient for seeing things, was hos- 
pitably taxed to its limits. New people kept turning in at the 
gate, mostly ladies, mostly white-haired ladies wearing 
black, and Sharlee was incessantly springing up to greet 
them. However, Queed, feeling that the proceedings might 
be instructive to him, had had the foresight to come early, 
before the sidewalks solidified with spectators; and at 
first, and spasmodically thereafter, he had some talk with 
Sharlee. 

“So you did n’t forget?” she said, in greeting him. 

He eyed her reflectively. “When I was seven years old,” 
he began, “Tim once asked me to attend to something for him 
while he went out for a minute. It was to mind some bacon 
that he had put on to broil for supper. I became absorbed in 
a book I was reading, and Tim came back to find the bacon 
a crisp. I believe I have never forgotten anything from that 
day to this. You have a holiday at the Department?” 

“Why, do you suppose we’d work to-day /” said Sharlee, 
and introduced him to her mother, who, having attentively 
overheard his story of Tim and the bacon, proceeded to 
look him over with some care. 

Sharlee left them for a moment, and came back bearing 
a flag about the size of a man’s visiting card. 

“You are one of us, aren’t you? I have brought you,” 
she said, “your colors.” 

Queed looked and recognized the flag that was everywhere 
in predominance that day. “And what will it mean if I 
wear it?” 

“Only,” said Sharlee, “that you love the South.” 


QUEED 259 

Vaguely Queed saw in her blue-spar eyes the same kind of 
softness that he noticed in people’s voices this afternoon, 
a softness which somehow reminded him of a funeral, Fifi’s 
or Colonel Cowles’s. 

“Oh, very well, if you like/’ 

Sharlee put the flag in his buttonhole under her mother’s 
watchful gaze. Then she got cushions and straw-mats, and 
explained their uses in connection with steps. Next, she 
gave a practical demonstration of the same by seating the 
young man, and sitting down beside him. 

“One thing I have noticed about loving the South. 
Everybody does it, who takes the trouble to know us. 
Look at the people! — millions and millions. . . .” 

“Colonel Cowles would have liked this.” 

“Yes — dear old man.” Sharlee paused a moment, and 
then went on. “He was in the parade last year — on the 
beautifullest black horse — You never saw anything so 
handsome as he looked that day. It was in Savannah, and 
I went. I was a maid of honor, but my real duties were to 
keep him from marching around in the hot sun all day. And 
now this year . . .You see, that is what makes it so sad. 
When these old men go tramping by, everybody is thinking: 
‘Hundreds of them won’t be here next year, and hundreds 
more the next year, and soon will come a year when there 
won’t be any parade at all.’” 

She sprang up to welcome a new arrival, whom she greeted 
as either Aunt Mary or Cousin Maria, we really cannot 
undertake to say which. 

Queed glanced over the group on the porch, to most of 
whom he had been introduced, superfluously, as it seemed 
to him. There must have been twenty or twenty-five of 
them ; some seated, some standing at the rail, some sitting 
near him on the steps; I?ut all, regardless of age and sex, 
wearing the Confederate colors. He noticed particularly 
the white-haired old ladies, and somehow their faces, also, 
put him in mind of Fifi’s or Colonel Cowles’s funeral. 

Sharlee came and sat down by him again. “ Mr. Queed/* 


260 QUEED 

said she, “I don’t know whether you expect sympathy 
about what the Post directors did, or congratulations.” 

“Oh, congratulations,” he answered at once. “Consider- 
ing that they wanted to discharge me a year ago, I should 
say that the testimonial they gave me represented a rather 
large change of front.” 

“Personally, I think it is splendid. But the important 
thing is: does it satisfy you ?” 

“Oh, quite.” He added : “If they had gone outside for 
a man, I might have felt slighted. It is very different with a 
man like West. I am perfectly willing to wait. You may 
remember that I did not promise to be editor in any par- 
ticular year.” 

“I know. And when they do elect you — you see I say 
when, and not if — shall you pitch it in their faces, as you 
said?” 

“No — I have decided to keep it — for a time at any 
rate.” 

Sharlee smiled, but it was an inward smile and he never 
knew anything about it. “ Have you gotten really interested 
in the work — personally interested, I mean?” 

He hesitated. “I hardly like to say how much.” 

“The more you become interested in it — and I believe 
it will be progressive — the less you will mind saying so.” 

“It is a strange interest — utterly unlike me — ” 

“How do you know it is n’t more like you than anything 
you ever did in your life?” 

That struck him to silence; he gave her a quick inquiring 
glance, and looked away at once ; and Sharlee, for the mo- 
ment entirely oblivious of the noise and the throng all about 
her, went on. 

“ I called that a magnificent boast once — about your be- 
ing editor of the Post. Do you remember? Is n’t it time I 
was confessing that you have got the better of me?” 

“ I think it is too soon,” he answered, in his quietest voice, 
“to say whether I have got the better of you, or you have 
got the better of me.” 


QUEED 261 

Sharlee looked off down the street. “But you certainly 
will be editor of the Post some day.” 

“As I recall it, we did not speak only of editorial writing 
that night.” 

“Oh, listen ... !” 

From far away floated the strains of “ Dixie,” crashed out 
by forty bands. The crowd on the sidewalks stirred; pro- 
longed shouts went up; and now all those who were seated 
on the porch arose at one motion and came forward. 

Sharlee had to spring up to greet still another relative. She 
came back in a moment, sincerely hoping that Mr. Queed 
would resume the conversation which her exclamation had 
interrupted. But he spoke of quite a different matter, a faint 
cloud on his intelligent brow. 

“You should hear Professor Nicolovius on these veterans 
of yours.” 

“What does he say about them? Something hateful, I’m 
sure.” 

“Among other things, that they are a lot of professional 
beggars who have lived for forty years on their gray uniforms, 
and can best serve their country by dying with all possible 
speed. Do you know,” he mused, “if you could hear him, I 
believe you would be tempted to guess that he is a former 
Union officer — who got into trouble, perhaps, and was 
cashiered.” 

“But of course you know all about him?” 

“No,” said he, honest, but looking rather annoyed at hav- 
ing given her such an opening, “I know only what he told 
me.” 

“Sharlee,” came her mother’s voice from the rear, “are 
you sitting on the cold stone?” 

“No, mother. Two mats and a cushion.” 

“Well, he is not a Union officer,” said Sharlee to Queed, 
“ for if he were, he would not be bitter. All the bitterness now- 
adays comes from the non-combatants, the camp-followers, 
the sutlers, and the cowards. Look, Mr. Queed! Look /” 

The street had become a tumult, the shouting grew into a 


262 QUEED 

roar. Two squares away the head of the parade swept into 
view, and drew steadily nearer. Mr. Queed looked, and felt 
a thrill in despite of himself. 

At the head of the column came the escort, with the three 
regimental bands, mounted and bicycle police, city officials, 
visiting military, sons of veterans, and the militia, includ- 
ing the resplendent Light Infantry Blues of Richmond, a 
crack drill regiment with an honorable history dating from 
1789, and the handsomest uniforms ever seen. Behind the 
escort rode the honored commander-in-chief of the veterans, 
and staff, the grand marshal and staff, and a detachment of 
mounted veterans. The general commanding rode a dashing 
white horse, which he sat superbly despite his years, and re- 
ceived an ovation all along the line. An even greater ovation 
went to two festooned carriages which rolled behind the 
general staff: they contained four black-clad women, no 
longer young, who bore names that had been dear to the 
hearts of the Confederacy. After these came the veterans 
afoot, stepping like youngsters, for that was their pride, in 
faded equipments which contrasted sharply with the shin- 
ing trappings of the militia. They marched by state divi- 
sions, each division marshaled into brigades, each brigade 
subdivided again into camps. At the head of each division 
rode the major-general and staff, and behind each staff came 
a carriage containing the state’s sponsor and maids of honor. 
And everywhere there were bands, bands playing “ Dixie,” 
and the effect would have been even more glorious, if only 
any two of them had played the same part of it at the same 
time. 

Everybody was standing. It is doubtful if in all the city 
there was anybody sitting now, save those restrained by 
physical disabilities. Conversation on the Weyland piazza 
became exceedingly disjointed. Everybody was excitedly 
calling everybody else’s attention to things that seemed par- 
ticularly important in the passing spectacle. To Queed the 
amount these people appeared to know about it all was 
amazing. All during the afternoon he heard Sharlee identi- 


QUEED 263 

fying fragments of regiments with a sureness of knowledge 
that he, an authority on knowledge, marveled at. 

The escort passed, and the officers and staffs drew on. The 
fine-figured old commander-in-chief, when he came abreast, 
turned and looked full at the Weyland piazza, seemed to 
search it for a face, and swept his plumed hat to his stirrup 
in a profound bow. The salute was greeted on the porch with 
a burst of hand-clapping and a great waving of flags. 

“That was for my grandmother. He was in love with her 
in 1850,” said Sharlee to Queed, and immediately whisked 
away to tell something else to somebody else. 

One of the first groups of veterans in the line, heading the 
Virginia Division, was the popular R. E. Lee Camp of Rich- 
mond. All afternoon they trod to the continual accompani- 
ment of cheers. No exclusive “ show ” company ever marched 
in better time than these septuagenarians, and this was 
everywhere the subject of comment. A Grand Army man 
stood in the press on the sidewalk, and, struck by the gallant 
step of the old fellows, yelled out good-naturedly: — 

“You boys been drillin’ to learn to march like that, have n’t 
you?” 

Instantly a white-beard in the ranks called back: “No, 
sir ! We never have forgot ! ’ ’ 

Other camps were not so rhythmic in their tread. Some of 
the lines were very dragging and straggly ; the old feet shuffled 
and faltered in a way which showed that their march was 
nearly over. Not fifty yards away from Queed, one veteran 
pitched out of the ranks; he was lifted up and received into 
the house opposite which he fell. Sadder than the men were 
the old battle-flags, soiled wisps that the aged hands held 
aloft with the most solicitous care. The flag-poles were heavy 
and the men’s arms weaker than once they were; sometimes 
two or even three men acted jointly as standard-bearer. 

These old flags, mere unrecognizable fragments as many 
of them were, were popular with the onlookers. Each as it 
marched by, was hailed with a new roar. Of course there 
were many tears. There was hardly anybody in all that crowd, 


264 QUEED 

over fifty years old, in whom the sight of these fast dwindling 
ranks did not stir memories of some personal bereavement. 
The old ladies on the porch no longer used their handker- 
chiefs chiefly for waving. Queed saw one of them wave hers 
frantically toward a drooping little knot of passing gray- 
coats, and then fall back into a chair, the same handkerchief 
at her eyes. Sharlee, who was explaining everything that 
anybody wanted to know, happened to be standing near him ; 
she followed his glance and whispered gently: — 

“Her husband and two of her brothers were killed at 
Gettysburg. Her husband was in Pickett’s Division. Those 
were Pickett’s men that just passed — about all there are 
left now.” 

A little while afterwards, she added: “It is not so gay as 
one of your Grand Army Days, is it? You see ... it all 
comes home very close to us. Those old men that can’t be 
with us much longer are our mothers’ brothers, and sweet- 
hearts, and uncles, and fathers. They went out so young — 
so brave and full of hope — they poured out by hundreds 
of thousands. Down this very street they marched, no more 
than boys, and our mothers stood here where we are stand- 
ing, to bid them godspeed. And now look at what is left of 
them, straggling by. There is nobody on this porch — but 
you — who did not lose somebody that was dear to them. 

. . . And then there was our pride ... for we were proud. 
So that is why our old ladies cry to-day.” 

“And why your young ladies cry, too?” 

“Oh, ... I am not crying.” 

“Don’t you suppose I know when people are crying and 
when they are n’t? — Why do you do it?” 

Sharlee lowered her eyes. “Well ... it’s all pretty sad, 
you know . . . pretty sad.” 

She turned away, leaving him to his own devices. From 
his place on the top step, Queed turned and let his frank 
glance run over the ladies on the porch. The sadness of face 
that he had noticed earlier had dissolved and precipitated 
now: there was hardly a dry eye on that porch but his own. 


QUEED 265 

What were they all crying for? Miss Weyland’s explanation 
did not seem very convincing. The war had ended a genera- 
tion ago. The whole thing had been over and done with many 
years before she was born. 

He turned again, and looked out with unseeing eyes over 
the thick street, with the thin strip of parade moving down the 
middle of it. He guessed that these ladies on the porch were 
not crying for definite brothers, or fathers, or sweethearts 
they had lost. People did n’t do that after forty years; here 
was Fifi only dead a year, and he never saw anybody crying 
for her. No, they were weeping over an idea; it was senti- 
ment, and a vague, misty, unreasonable sentiment at tuat. 
And yet he could not say that Miss Weyland appeared simply 
foolish with those tears in her eyes. No, the girl somehow 
managed to give the effect of seeing farther into things than 
he himself. . . . Her tears evidently were in the nature of 
a tribute: she was paying them to an idea. Doubtless there 
was a certain largeness about that. But obviously the pay- 
ing of such a tribute could do no possible good — unless 
— to the payer. Was there anything in that? — in the 
theory. . . . 

Unusual bursts of cheering broke their way into his con- 
sciousness, and he recalled himself to see a squad of negro 
soldiers, all very old men, hobbling by. These were of the 
faithful, whom no number of proclamations could shake from 
allegiance to Old Marster. One of them declared himself to 
be Stonewall Jackson’s cook. Very likely Stonewall Jackson’s 
cooks are as numerous as once were ladies who had been 
kissed by LaFayette, but at any rate this old negro was the 
object of lively interest all along the line. He was covered 
with reunion badges, and carried two live chickens under his 
arm. 

Queed went down to the bottom step, the better to hear 
the comments of the onlookers, for this was what interested 
him most. He found himself standing next to an exception- 
ally clean-cut young fellow of about his own age. This youth 
appeared a fine specimen of the sane, wholesome, successful 


266 QUEED 

young American business man. Yet he was behaving like a 
madman, yelling like Bedlam, wildly flaunting his hat — 
a splendid-looking Panama — now and then savagely brand- 
ishing his fists at an unseen foe. Queed heard him saying 
fiercely, apparently to the world at large: “They could n’t 
lick us now. By the Lord, they could n’t lick us now!” 

Queed said to him; “You were badly outnumbered when 
they licked you.” 

Flaunting his hat passionately at the thin columns, the 
young man shouted into space: “Outnumbered — outarmed 
— outequipped — outrationed — but not outgeneraled, sir, 
notoutsoldiered, not outmanned! ” 

“You seem a little excited about it. Yet you ’ve had forty 
years to get used to it.” 

“Ah,” brandished the young man at the soldiers, a glad 
battlenote breaking into his voice, “I’m being addressed by 
a Yankee, am I?” 

“No,” said Queed, “you are being addressed by an Ameri- 
can.” 

“That’s a fair reply,” said the young man; and consented 
to take his eyes from the parade a second to glance at the 
author of it. “Hello! You’re Doc — Mr. Queed, aren’t 
you?” 

Queed, surprised, admitted his identity. 

“Ye-a-a-a!” said the young man, in a mighty voice. This 
time he shouted it directly at a tall old gentleman whose 
horse was just then dancing by. The gentleman smiled, and 
waved his hand at the flaunted Panama. 

“A fine-looking man,” said Queed. 

“My father,” said the young man. “God bless his heart!” 

“Was your father in the war?” 

“Was he in the war? My dear sir, you might say that he 
was the war. But you could scrape this town with a fine- 
tooth comb without finding anybody of his age that was n’t 
in the war.” 

The necessity for a new demonstration checked his speech 
for a moment. 


QUEED 267 

Queed said: “Who are these veterans? What sort of people 
are they?” 

“The finest fellows in the world,” said the young man, 
“An occasional dead-beat among them, of course, but it’s 
amazing how high an average of character they strike, con- 
sidering that they came out of four years of war — war ’s de- 
moralizing, you know! — with only their shirts to their backs, 
and often those were only borrowed. You ’ll find some mighty 
solid business men in the ranks out there, and then on down 
to the humblest occupations. Look! See that little one- 
legged man with the beard that everybody’s cheering! 
That’s Corporal Henkel of Petersburg, commended I don’t 
know how many times for bravery, and they would have 
given him the town for a keepsake when it was all over, if he 
had wanted it. Well, Henkel ’s a cobbler — been one since 
’65 — and let me tell you he ’s a blamed good one, and if 
you ’re ever in Petersburg and want any half-soling done, 
let me tell you — Yea-a-a! See that trim-looking one with 
the little mustache — saluting now? He tried to save Stone- 
wall Jackson’s life on the 2d of May, 1863, — threw himself 
in front of him and got badly potted. He’s a D. D. now. 
Yea-a-a-a!” 

A victoria containing two lovely young girls, sponsor and 
maid of honor for South Carolina, dressed just alike, with 
parasols and enormous hats, rolled by. The girls smiled 
kindly at the young man, and he went through a very proper 
salute. * 

“Watch the people!” he dashed on eagerly. “Wonderful 
how they love these old soldiers, is n’t it? — they’d give ’em 
anything! And what a fine thing that is for them! — for the 
people, not the soldiers, I mean. I tell you we all give too 
much time to practical things — business — making money 
— taking things away from each other. It’s a fine thing to 
have a day now and then which appeals to just the other 
side of us — a regular sentimental spree. Do you see what 
I mean? Maybe I ’m talking like an ass. . . . But when you 
talk about Americans, Mr. Queed — let me tell you that 


268 QUEED 

there isn’t a State in the country that is raising better 
Americans than we are raising right here in this city. We ’re 
as solid for the Union as Boston. But that is n’t saying that 
we have forgotten all about the biggest happening in our 
history — the thing that threw over our civilization, wiped 
out our property, and turned our State into a graveyard. 
If we forgot that, we would n’t be Americans, because we 
would n’t be men.” 

He went on fragmentarily, ever and anon interrupting 
himself to give individual ovations to his heroes and his 
gods : — 

“ Through the North and West you may have one old sol- 
dier to a village ; here we have one to a house. For you it was a 
foreign war, which meant only dispatches in the newspapers. 
For us it was a war on our own front lawns, and the way we 
followed it was by the hearses backing up to the door. You 
can hardly walk a mile in any direction out of this city with- 
out stumbling upon an old breastworks. And in the city — 
well, you know all the great old landmarks, all around us as 
we stand here now. On this porch behind us sits a lady who 
knew Lee well. Many ’s the talk she had with him after the 
war. My mother, a bride then, sat in the pew behind Davis 
that Sunday he got the message which meant that the war was 
over. History ! Why this old town drips with it. Do you think 
we should forget our heroes, Mr. Queed? Up there in Massa- 
chusetts, if you have a place where John Samuel Quincy 
Adams once stopped for a cup of tea, you fence it off, put a 
brass plate on the front door, and charge a nickel to go in. 
Which will history say is the greater man, Sam Adams or 
Robert E. Lee? If these were Washington’s armies going by, 
you would probably feel a little excited, though you have had 
a hundred and twenty years to get used to Yorktown and 
the Philadelphia Congress. Well, Washington is no more 
to the nation than Lee is to the South. 

“But don’t let anybody get concerned about our patriot- 
ism. We ’re better Americans, not worse, because of days 
like these, the reason being, as I say, that we are better 


QUEED 269 

men. And if your old Uncle Sammy gets into trouble some 
day, never fear but we ’ll be on hand to pull him out, with 
the best troops that ever stepped, and another Lee to lead 
them.” 

Somewhere during the afternoon there had returned to 
Queed the words in which Sharlee Weyland had pointed out 
to him — quite unnecessarily — that he was standing here 
between two civilizations. On the porch now sat Miss Wey- 
land ’s grandmother, representative of the dead aristocracy. 
By his side stood, clearly, a representative of the rising democ- 
racy — one of those “splendid young men” who, the girl 
thought, would soon be beating the young men of the North 
at every turn. It was valuable professionally to catch the 
point of view of these new democrats; and now he had 
grasped the fact that whatever the changes in outward form, 
it had an unbroken sentimental continuity with the type 
which it was replacing. 

“Did you ever hear Ben Hill’s tribute to Lee?” inquired 
the young man presently. 

Queed happened to know it very well. However, the other 
could not be restrained from reciting it for his own satisfac- 
tion. 

“ It is good — a good piece of writing and a fine tribute,” 
said Queed. “However, I read a shorter and in some ways 
an even better one in Harper's Weekly the other day.” 

“ Harper's Weekly l Good Heavens! They’ll find out that 
William Lloyd Garrison was for us next. What’d it say?” 

“It was in answer to some correspondents who called Lee 
a traitor. The editor wrote five lines to say that, while it 
would be exceedingly difficult ever to make ‘ traitor ’ a word of 
honorable distinction, it would be done if people kept on 
applying it to Lee. In that case, he said, we should have to 
find a new word to mean what traitor means now.” 

The young man thought this over until its full meaning 
sank into him. “ I don’t know how you could say anything 
finer of a man,” he remarked presently, “ than that applying 
a disgraceful epithet to him left him entirely untouched, but 


270 QUEED 

changed the whole meaning of the epithet. By George, 
that’s pretty fine! ” 

“My only criticism on the character, or rather on the 
greatness, of Lee,” said Queed, introspectively, “is that, so 
far as I have ever read, he never got angry. One feels that a 
hero should be a man of terrible passions, so strong that 
once or twice in his life they get away from him. Washing- 
ton always seems a bigger man because of his blast at 
Charles Lee.” 

The young man seemed interested by this point of view. 
He said that he would ask Mrs. Beauregard about it. 

Not much later he said with a sigh: “Well! — It’s about 
over. And now I must pay for my fun — duck back to the 
office for a special night session.” 

Queed had taken a vague fancy to this youth, whose en- 
viably pleasant manners reminded him somehow of Charles 
Gardiner West. “ I supposed that it was only in newspaper 
offices that work went on without regard to holidays.” 

The young man laughed, and held out his hand. “I’m very 
industrious, if you please. I ’m delighted to have met you, 
Mr. Queed — I ’ve known of you for a long time. My name ’s 
Byrd — Beverley Byrd — and I wish you ’d come and see 
me some time. Good-by. I hope I have n’t bored you with 
all my war-talk. I lost a grandfather and three uncles in it, 
and I can’t help being interested.” 

The last of the parade went by; the dense crowd broke and 
overran the street ; and Queed stood upon the bottom step 
taking his leave of Miss Weyland. Much interested, he had 
lingered till the other guests were gone ; and now there was 
nobody upon the porch but Miss Weyland ’s mother and 
grandmother, who sat at the further end of it, the eyes of both, 
did Mr. Queed but know it, upon him. 

“Why don’t you come to see me sometimes? ” the daughter 
and granddaughter was saying sweetly. “I think you will 
have to come now, for this was a party, and a party calls 
for a party-call. Oh, can you make as clever a pun as that? ” 

“Thank you — but I never pay calls.” 


QUEED 271 

“Oh, but you are beginning to do a good many things 
that you never did before.” 

“Yes,” he answered with curious depression. “I am.” 

“Well, don’t look so glum about it. You mustn’t think 
that any change in your ways of doing is necessarily for the 
worse! ” 

He refused to take up the cudgels; an uncanny thing from 
him. “Well ! I am obliged to you for inviting me here to-day. 
It has been interesting and — instructive.” 

“And now you have got us all neatly docketed on your 
sociological operating table, I suppose?” 

“I am inclined to think,” he said slowly, “that it is you 
who have got me on the operating table again.” 

He gave her a quick glance, at once the unhappiest and 
the most human look that she had ever seen upon his face. 

“No,” said she, gently, — “if you are on the table, you 
have put yourself there this time.” 

“Well, good-by—” 

* ‘ And are you coming to see me — to pay your party-call ? ’ * 

“Why should I? What is the point of these conventions 
— these little rules — ?” 

“Don’t you like being with me? Don’t you get a great 
deal of pleasure from my society?” 

“I have never asked myself such a question.” 

He was gazing at her for a third time ; and a startled look 
sprang suddenly into his eyes. It was plain that he was ask- 
ing himself such a question now. A curious change passed 
over his face; a kind of dawning consciousness which, it 
was obvious, embarrassed him to the point of torture, while 
he resolutely declined to flinch at it. 

“Yes — I get pleasure from your society.” 

The admission turned him rather white, but he saved him- 
self by instantly flinging at her : “ However, I am no hedonist .” 

Sharlee retired to look up hedonist in the dictionary. 

Later that evening, Mrs. Weyland and her daughter being 
together upstairs, the former said : — 


272 QUEED 

“Sharlee, who is this Mr. Queed that you paid so much 
attention to on the porch this evening?” 

“Why, don’t you know, mother? He is the assistant ed- 
itor of the Post , and is going to be editor just the minute 
Mr. West retires. For you see, mother, everybody says that 
he writes the most wonderful articles, although I assure 
you, a year ago — ” 

“Yes, but who is he? Where does he come from? Who are 
his people?” 

“Oh, I see. That is what you mean. Well, he comes from 
New York, where he led the most interesting literary sort 
of life, studying all the time, except when he was doing arti- 
cles for the great reviews, or helping a lady up there to write 
a thesaurus. You see, he was fitting himself to compose a 
great work — ” 

“Who are his people?” 

“Oh, that!” said Sharlee. “Well, that question is not so 
easy to answer as you might think. It opens up a peculiar 
situation: to begin with, he is a sort of an orphan, and — ” 

“How do you mean, a sort of an orphan?” 

“You see, that is just where the peculiar part comes in. 
There is the heart of the whole mystery, and yet right there 
is the place where I must be reticent with you, mother, for 
though I know all about it, it was told to me confidentially 
— professionally, as my aunt’s agent — and therefore — ” 

“ Do you mean that you know nothing about his people? ” 

“I suppose it might be stated, crudely, in that way, 
but — ” 

“And knowing nothing about who or what he was, you 
simply picked him up at the boarding-house, and admitted 
him to your friendship?” 

“ Picking-up is not the word that the most careful mothers 
employ, in reference to their daughters’ attitude toward 
young men. Mother, don’t you understand? I’m a demo- 
crat.” 

“ It is not a thing,” said Mrs. Weyland, with some asper- 
ity, “for a lady to be.” 


QUEED 


273 


Sharlee, fixing her hair in the back before the mirror, 
laughed long and merrily. “Do you dare — do you dare 
look your own daughter in the eye and say she is no lady?” 

“ Do you like this young man?” Mrs. Weyland continued. 

“He interests me, heaps and heaps.” 

Mrs. Weyland sighed. “I can only say,” she observed, 
sinking into a chair and picking up her book, “that such 
goings on were never heard of in my day.” 


XXII 


In which Professor Nicolovius drops a Letter on the Floor , and 
Queed conjectures that Happiness sometimes comes to Men 
wearing a Strange Face. 

UEED sat alone in the sitting-room of the Duke of 



Gloucester Street house. His afternoon’s experiences 


had interested him largely. By subtle and occult 
processes which defied his analysis, what he had seen and 
heard had proved mysteriously disturbing — all this out- 
pouring of irrational sentiment in which he had no share. 
So had his conversation with the girl disturbed him. He 
was in a condition of mental unrest, undefined but acute; 
odds and ends of curious thought kicked about within him, 
challenging him to follow them down to unexplored depths. 
But he was paying no attention to them now. 

He sat in the sitting-room, wondering how Nicolovius had 
ever happened to think of that story about the Fenian 
refugee. 

For Queed had been gradually driven to that unpleasant 
point. While living in the old man’s house, he was, despite 
his conscientious efforts, virtually spying upon him. 

The Fenian story had always had its questionable points; 
but so long as the two men were merely chance fellow-board- 
ers, it did as well as any other. Now that they lived together, 
however, the multiplying suggestions that the old profes- 
sor was something far other than he pretended became rather 
important. The young man could not help being aware that 
Nicolovius neither looked nor talked in the slightest degree 
like an Irishman. He could not help being certain that an 
Irishman who had fled to escape punishment for a political 
crime, in 1882, could have safely returned to his country long 
ago; and would undoubtedly have kept up relations with 


QUEED 275 

his friends overseas in the meantime. Nor could he help being 
struck with such facts as that Nicolovius, while apparently 
little interested in the occasional cables about Irish affairs, 
had become seemingly absorbed in the three days’ doings 
of the United Confederate Veterans. 

Now it was entirely all right for the old man to have a 
secret, and keep it. There was not the smallest quarrel on 
that score. But it was not in the least. all right for one man 
to live with another, pretending to believe in him, when in 
reality he was doubting and questioning him at every move. 
The want of candor involved in his present relations with 
Nicolovius continually fretted Queed’s conscience. Ought 
he not in common honesty to tell the old man that he could 
not believe the Irish biography, leaving it to him to decide 
what he wanted to do about it? 

Nicolovius, tramping in only a few minutes behind Queedt 
greeted his young friend as blandly as ever. Physically, he 
seemed tired; much dust of city streets clung to his com- 
monly spotless boots; but his eyes were so extraordinarily 
brilliant that Queed at first wondered if he could have been 
drinking. However, this thought died almost as soon as it 
was born. 

The professor walked over to the window and stood looking 
out, hat on head. Presently he said: “You saw the grand 
parade, I suppose? For indeed there was no escaping it.” 

Queed said that he had seen it. 

“You had a good place to see it from, I hope?” 

Excellent; Miss Weyland’s porch. 

“Ah!” said Nicolovius, with rather an emphasis, and per- 
mitted a pause to fall. “A most charming young lady — 
charming,” he went on, with his note of velvet irony which 
the young man peculiarly disliked. “I hear she is to marry 
your Mr. West. An eminently suitable match in every way. 
Yet I shall not soon forget how that delightful young man 
defrauded you of the editorship.” 

Silence from Mr. Queed, the question of the editorship 
having already been thoroughly threshed out between them. 


876 QUEED 

“I, too, saw the gallant proceedings,” resumed Nicolo- 
vius, retracing his thought. “What an outfit! What an out- 
fit!” 

He dropped down into his easy chair by the table, removed 
his straw hat with traces of a rare irritation in his manner, 
put on his black skull cap, and presently purred his thoughts 
aloud : — 

“No writer has yet done anything like justice to the old 
soldier cult in the post-bellum South. Doubtless it may lie 
out of the province of you historians, but what a theme 
for a new Thackeray ! With such a fetish your priestcraft 
of the Middle Ages is not to be compared for a moment. 
There is no parallel among civilized nations ; to find one you 
must go to theVoodooism of the savage black. For more 
than a generation all the intelligence of the South has been 
asked, nay compelled, to come and bow down before these 
alms-begging loblollies. To refuse to make obeisance was 
treason. The entire public thought of a vast section of the 
country has revolved around the figure of a worthless old 
grafter in a tattered gray shirt. Every question is settled 
when some moth-eaten ne’er-do-well lets out what is known, 
as a 'rebel yell.’ The most polished and profound speech 
conceivable is answered when a jackass mounts the platform 
and brays out something about the gallant boys in gray. 
The cry for progress, for material advancement, for moral 
and social betterment, is stifled, that everybody may have 
breath to shout for a flapping trouser’s leg worn by a de- 
graded old sot. All that your Southern statesmen have had 
to give a people who were stripped to the bone is fulsome 
rhetoric about the Wounded Warrior of Wahoo, or some other 
inflated nonentity, whereupon the mesmerized population 
have loyally fallen on their faces and shouted, ‘Praise the 
Lord.’ And all the while they were going through this 
wretched mummery, they were hungry and thirsty and 
naked — destitute in a smiling land of plenty. Do you won- 
der that I think old-soldierism is the meanest profession the 
Lord ever suffered to thrive? I tell you Baal and Moloch 


QUEED 277 

never took such toll of their idolaters as these shabby old 
gods of the gray shirt.” 

“Professor Nicolovius,” said Queed, with a slow smile, 
“where on earth do you exhume your ideas of Southern his- 
tory?” 

“Observation, my dear boy ! God bless us, have n’t I had 
three years of this city to use my eyes and ears in? And I had 
a peculiar training in my youth,” he added, retrospectively, 
“to fit me to see straight and generalize accurately.” 

. . . Could n’t the man see that no persecuted Irishman 
ever talked in such a way since the world began? If he had 
a part to play, why in the name of common sense could n’t 
he play it respectably? 

Queed got up, and began strolling about the floor. In his 
mind was what Sharlee Weyland had said to him two hours 
before: “All the bitterness nowadays comes from the non- 
combatants, the camp-followers, the sutlers, and the cow- 
ards.” Under which of these heads did his friend, the old 
professor, fall? . . . Why had he ever thought of Nico- 
lovius as, perhaps, a broken Union officer? A broken Union 
officer would feel bitter, if at all, against the Union. A man 
who felt so bitter against the South — 

A resolution was rapidly hardening in the young; man’s 
mind. He felt this attitude of doubt and suspicion, these 
thoughts that he was now thinking about the man whose 
roof he shared, as an unclean spot upon his chaste pas- 
sion for truth. He could not feel honest again until he 
had wiped it off. . . . And, after all, what did he owe to 
Nicolovius? 

“But I must not leave you under the impression,” said 
Nicolovius, almost testily for him, “that my ideas are unique 
and extraordinary. They are shared, in fact, by Southern 
historians of repute and — ” 

Queed turned on him. “But you never read Southern 
historians.” 

Nicolovius had a smile for that, though his expression 
seemed subtly to shift. “I must make confession to you. 


278 QUEED 

Three days ago, I broke the habits of quarter of a century. At 
the second-hand shop on Centre Street I bought, actually, a 
little volume of history. It is surprising how these Southern 
manifestations have interested me.” 

Queed was an undesirable person for any man to live with 
who had a secret to keep. His mind was relentlessly con- 
structive; it would build you up the whole dinosaur from 
the single left great digitus. For apparently no reason at all, 
there had popped into his head a chance remark of Major 
Brooke’s a year ago, which he had never thought of from 
that day to this: “I can’t get over thinking that I’ve seen 
that man before a long time ago, when he looked entirely 
different, and yet somehow the same too.” 

“I will show you my purchase,” added Nicolovius, after 
a moment of seeming irresolution. 

He disappeared down the hall to his bedroom, a retreat 
in which Queed had never set foot, and returned promptly 
carrying a dingy duodecimo in worn brown leather. As he 
entered the room, he absently raised the volume to his lips 
and blew along the edges. 

Queed ’s mental processes were beyond his own control. 
“ Three days old,” flashed into his mind, “and he blows dust 
from it.” 

“What is the book?” he asked. 

“A very able little history of the Reconstruction era in 
this State. I have a mind to read you a passage and convert 
you.” 

Nicolovius sat down, and began turning the pages. Queed 
stood a step away, watching him intently. The old man 
fluttered the leaves vaguely for a moment; then his expres- 
sion shifted and, straightening up, he suddenly closed the 
book. 

“I don’t appeaf to find,” he said easily, “the little pas- 
sage that so impressed me the day before yesterday. And 
after all, what would be the use of reading it to you? You im- 
petuous young men will never listen to the wisdom of your 
elders.” 


QUEED 279 

Smiling blandly, the subject closed, it might have been for- 
ever, Nicolovius reached out toward the table to flick the 
ash from his cigarette. In so doing, as luck had it, he struck 
the book and knocked it from his knees. Something shook 
from its pages as it dropped, and fell almost at Queed 's feet. 
Mechanically he stooped to pick it up. 

It was a letter, at any rate an envelope, and it had fallen 
face up, full in the light of the open window. The envelope 
bore an address, in faded ink, but written in a bold legible 
hand . Not to save his soul could Queed have avoided seeing it : 

Henry G. Surface , Esq., 
j6 Washington Street. 

There was a dead silence: a silence that from matter-of- 
fact suddenly became unendurable. 

Queed handed the envelope to Nicolovius. Nicolovius 
glanced at it, while pretending not to, and his eyelash flick- 
ered; his face was about the color of cigar ashes. Queed 
walked away, waiting. 

He expected that the old man would immediately demand 
whether he had seen that name and address, or at least would 
immediately say something. But he did nothing of the sort. 
When Queed turned at the end of the room, Nicolovius was 
fluttering the pages of his book again, apparently absorbed 
in it, apparently quite forgetting that he had just laid it 
aside. Then Queed understood. Nicolovius did not mean to 
say or do anything. He meant to pass over the little inci- 
dent altogether. 

However, the pretense had now reached a point when 
Queed could no longer endure it. 

“Perhaps, after all,” said Nicolovius, in his studiously 
bland voice, “I am a little sweeping — ” 

Queed stood in front of him, interrupting, suddenly not at 
ease. “Professor Nicolovius.” 

“Yes?” 

“ I must say something that will offend you, I ’m afraid. 


280 QUEED 

For some time I have found myself unable to believe 
the — story of your life you were once good enough to 
give me.” 

“Ah, well,” said Nicolovius, engrossed in his book, “it is 
not required of you to believe it. We need have no quarrel 
about that.” 

Suddenly Queed found that he hated to give the stab, but 
he did not falter. 

“ I must be frank with you, professor. I saw whom that 
envelope was addressed to just now.” 

“Nor need we quarrel about that.” 

But Queed’s steady gaze upon him presently grew un- 
bearable, and at last the old man raised his head. 

“Well? Whom was it addressed to?” 

Queed felt disturbingly sorry for him, and, in the same 
thought, admired his iron control. The old professor’s face 
was gray; his very lips were colorless; but his eyes were 
steady, and his voice was the voice of every day. 

“I think,” said Queed, quietly, “that it is addressed to 
you.” 

There was a lengthening silence while the two men, mo- 
tionless, looked into each other’s eyes. The level gaze of 
each held just the same look of faint horror, horror subdued 
and controlled, but still there. Their stare became fascinated ; 
it ran on as though nothing could ever happen to break it off. 
To Queed it seemed as if everything in the world had dropped 
away but those brilliant eyes, frightened yet unafraid, bor- 
ing into his. 

Nicolovius broke the silence. The triumph of his intelli- 
gence over his emotions showed in the fact that he attempted 
no denial. 

“Well?” he said somewhat thickly. “Well? — Well?” 

Under the look of the younger man, he was beginning to 
break. Into the old eyes had sprung a deadly terror, a look 
as though his immortal soul might hang on what the young 
man was going to say next. To answer this look, a blind im- 
pulse in Queed bade him strike out, to say or do something; 


QUEED 281 

and his reason, which was always detached and impersonal, 
was amazed to hear his voice saying: — 

“ It ’s all right, professor. Not a thing is going to happen. ” 

The old man licked his lips. “You . . . will stay on 
here? ” 

And Queed ’s voice answered: “As long as you want me.” 

Nicolovius, who had been born Surface, suffered a mo- 
ment of collapse. He fell back in his chair, and covered his 
face with his hands. 

The dying efforts of the J une sun still showed in the pretty 
sitting-room, though the town clocks were striking seven. 
From without floated in the voices of merry passers; eddies 
of the day’s celebration broke even into this quiet street. 
Queed sat down in a big-armed rocker, and looked out the 
window into the pink west. 

So, in a minute’s time and by a wholly chance happening, 
the mystery was out at last. Professor Nicolovius, the bland 
recluse of Mrs. Paynter’s, and Henry G. Surface, political 
arch-traitor, ex-convict, and falsest of false friends, were one 
and the same man. 

The truth had been instantly plain to Queed when the 
name had blazed up at him from the envelope on the floor. 
It was as though Fate herself had tossed that envelope under 
his eyes, as the answer to all his questionings. Not an in- 
stant’s doubt had troubled him ; and now a score of memories 
were marshaling themselves before him to show that his first 
flashing certainty had been sound. As for the book, it was 
clearly from the library of the old man’s youth, kept and 
hidden away for some reason, when nearly everything else 
had been destroyed. Between the musty pages the accusing 
letter had lain forgotten for thirty years, waiting for this 
moment. 

He turned and glanced once at the silent figure, huddled 
back in the chair with covered eyes ; the unhappy old man 
whom nobody had ever trusted without regretting it. Henry 
G. Surface — whose name was a synonym for those traits 
^and things which honest men of all peoples and climes have 


282 QUEED 

always hated most, treachery, perfidy, base betrayal of 
trust, shameful dishonesty — who had crowded the word 
infamy from the popular lexicon of politics with the keener, 
more biting epithet, Surfaceism. And here — wonder of 
wonders — sat Surface before him, drawn back to the scene 
of his fall like a murderer to the body and the scarlet stain 
upon the floor, caught, trapped, the careful mask of many 
years plucked from him at a sudden word, leaving him no 
covering upon earth but his smooth white hands. And he, 
Queed, was this man’s closest, his only friend, chosen out 
of all the world to live with him and minister to his declin- 
ing years. . . . 

“It’s true!” now broke through the concealing hands. 
“I am that man. . . . God help me!” 

Queed looked unseeingly out of the window, where the sun 
was couching in a bed of copper flame stippled over with 
brightest azure. Why had he done it? What crazy 
prompting had struck from him that promise to yoke his 
destiny forever with this terrible old man? If Nicolovius, 
the Fenian refugee, had never won his liking, Surface, the 
Satan apostate, was detestable to him. What devil of im- 
pulse had trapped from him the mad offer to spend his days 
in the company of such a creature, and in the shadow of so 
odious an ill-fame? 

As on the day when Fifi had asked him her innocent ques- 
tion about altruism, a sudden tide swept the young man’s 
thoughts inward. And after them, this time, groped the 
blundering feet of his spirit. 

Here was he, a mature man, who, in point of work, in 
all practical and demonstrable ways, was the millionth 
man. He was a great editorial writer, which was a minor 
but genuine activity. He was a yet greater writer on social 
science, which was one of the supreme activities. On this 
side, then, certainly the chief side, there could be no question 
about the successfulness of his life. His working life was, or 
would be before he was through, brilliantly successful. But 
it had for some time been plain to him that he stopped short 


QUEED 283 

there. He was a great workman, but that was all. He was a 
superb rationalist ; but after that he did not exist. 

Through the science of Human Intercourse, he saw much 
more of people now than he had ever done before, and thus 
it had become driven home upon him that most people had 
two lives, their outer or practical lives, and their inner or 
personal lives. But he himself had but one life. He was a 
machine ; a machine which turned out matchless work for 
the enlightenment of the world, but after all a machine. He 
was intellect. He was Pure Reason. Yet he himself had said, 
and written, that intellectual supremacy was not the true 
badge of supremacy of type. There was nothing sure of races 
that was not equally sure of the individuals which make up 
those races. Yet intellect was all he was. Vast areas of 
thought, feeling, and conduct, in which the people around 
him spent so much of their time, were entirely closed to him. 
He had no personal life at all. That part of him had atrophied 
from lack of use, like the eyes of the mole and of those sight- 
less fishes men take from the waters of caverns. 

And now this part of him, which had for some time been 
stirring uneasily, had risen suddenly without bidding of 
his and in defiance of his reason, and laid hold of something 
in his environment. In doing so, it appeared to have thrust 
upon him an inner, or personal, life from this time forward. 
That life lay in being of use to the old man before him : he who 
had never been of personal use to anybody so far, and the 
miserable old man who had no comfort anywhere but in him. 

He knew the scientific name of this kind of behavior very 
well. It was altruism, the irrational force that had put a 
new face upon the world. Fifi, he remembered well, had as- 
sured him that in altruism he would find that fiercer happi- 
ness which was as much better than content as being well 
was better than not being sick. But . . . could this be 
happiness, this whirling confusion that put him to such 
straits to keep a calm face above the tumult of his breast? 
If this was happiness, then it came to him for their first 
meeting wearing a strange face. . . . 


284 QUEED 

“You know the story?” 

Queed moved in his chair. “Yes. I — have heard it.” 

“Of course,” said Nicolovius. “It is as well known as 
Iscariot’s. By God, how they’ve hounded me!” 

Evidently he was recovering fast. There was bitterness, 
rather than shame, in his voice. He took his hands from his 
eyes, adjusted his cap, stiffened up in his chair. The sallow 
tints were coming back into his face ; his lips took on color ; 
his eye and hand were steady. Not every man could have 
passed through such a cataclysm and emerged so little 
marked. He picked up his cigarette from the table; it was 
still going. This fact was symbolic : the great shock had come 
and passed within the smoking of an inch of cigarette. The 
pretty room was as it was before. Pale sunshine still flick- 
ered on the swelling curtain. The leather desk-clock gayly 
ticked the passing seconds. The young man’s clean-cut face 
looked as quiet as ever. 

Upon Queed the old man fastened his fearless black eyes. 

“I meant to tell you all this some day,” he said, in quite 
a natural voice. “Now the day has come a little sooner than 
I had meant — that is all. I know that my confidence is safe 
with you — till I die.” 

“I think you have nothing to fear by trusting me,” said 
Queed, and added at once: “But you need tell me nothing 
unless you prefer.” 

A kind of softness shone for a moment in Surface’s eyes. 
“Nobody could look at your face,” he said gently, “and ever 
be afraid to trust you.” 

The telephone rang, and Queed could answer it by merely 
putting out his hand. It was West, from the office, asking 
that he report for work that night, as he himself was com- 
pelled to be away. 

Presently Surface began talking; talking in snatches, 
more to himself than to his young friend, rambling back- 
ward over his broken life in passionate reminiscence. He 
talked a long time thus, while the daylight faded and dusk 
crept into the room, and then night; and Queed listened, giv- 


QUEED 285 

ing him all the rein he wanted and saying never a word him- 
self. 

. . Pray your gods,” said Surface, “that you never 
have such reason to hate your fellow-men as I have had, my 
boy. For that has been the keynote of my unhappy life. 
God, how I hated them all, and how I do yet! . . . Not 
least Weyland, with his ostentatious virtue, his holier-than- 
thou kindness, his self-righteous magnanimity tossed even 
to me . . . the broken-kneed idol whom others passed with 
averted face, and there was none so poor to do me rever- 
ence. . . .” 

So this, mused Queed, was the meaning of the old pro- 
fessor’s invincible dislike for Miss Weyland, which he had 
made so obvious in the boarding-house that even Mr. By- 
lash commented on it. He had never been able to forgive 
her father’s generosity, which he had so terribly betrayed; 
her name and her blood rankled and festered eternally in the 
heart of the faithless friend and the striped trustee. 

Henderson, the ancient African who attended the two 
men, knocked upon the shut door with the deprecatory an- 
nouncement that he had twice rung the supper- bell. 

“Take the things back to the kitchen, Henderson,” said 
Queed. “ I ’ll ring when we are ready.” 

The breeze was freshening, blowing full upon Surface, who 
did not appear to notice it. Queed got up and lowered the 
window. The old man’s neglected cigarette burned his fin- 
gers; he lit another; it, too, burned itself down to the cork- 
tip without receiving the attention of a puff. 

Presently he went on talking: 

“ I was of a high-spirited line. Thank God, I never learned 
to fawn on the hand that lashed me. Insult I would not 
brook. I struck back, and when I struck, I struck to kill. 
— Did I not? So hard that the State reeled. ... So hard 
that if I had had something better than mean negroes and 
worse whites for my tools, fifth-rate scavengers, buzzards 
of politics . . . this hand would have written the history 
of the State in these forty years. 


286 QUEED 

“That was the way I struck, and how did they answer 
me? — Ostracism . . . Coventry . . . The weapons of mean 
old women, and dogs. . . . The dogs! That is what they 
were. . . . 

“Well, other arms were ready to receive me. Others were 
fairer-minded than the cowardly bigots who could blow hot 
or cold as their selfish interests and prostituted leaders 
whispered. I was not a man to be kept down. Oh, my 
new friends were legion, and I was king again. But it was 
never the same. In that way, they beat me. I give them 
that. . . . Not they, though. It was deep calling to deep. 
My blood — heritage — tradition — education — all that I 
was . . . this was what tortured me with what was gone, 
and kept calling. 

“Wicked injustice and a lost birthright. . . . Oh, memory 
was there to crucify me, by day and by night. And yet . . . 
Why, it was a thing that is done every day by men these 
people say their prayers to. . . . Oh, yes — I wanted to 
punish — him for his smug condescension, his patronizing 
playing of the good Samaritan. And through him all these 
others . . . show them that their old idol wore claws on 
those feet of clay. But not in that way. No, a much 
cleverer way than that. Perhaps there would be no money 
when they asked for it, but I was to smile blandly and goon 
about my business. They were never to reach me. But the 
Surfaces were never skilled at juggling dirty money. . . . 

“ They took me off my guard. The most technical fault — 
a trifle. . . . Another day or two and everything would have 
been all right. They had my word for it — and you know 
how they replied. . . . The infamous tyranny of the majority. 
The greatest judicial crime in a decade, and they laughed. 

“So now I lie awake in the long nights with nine years of 
that to look back on. 

“Let my life be a lesson to you teaching you — if no- 
thing else — that it is of no use to fight society. They have 
a hopeless advantage, the contemptible advantage of num- 
bers, and they are not ashamed to use it. . . . But my spirit 


QUEED 287 

would not let me lie quiet under injury and insult. I was 
ever a fighter, born to die with my spurs on. And when I die 
at last, they will find that I go with a Parthian shot . . . 
and after all have the last word. 

<! So I came out into a bright world again, an old man 
before my time, ruined forever, marked with a scarlet mark 
to wear to my grave. . . . 

“And then in time, as of course it would, the resolve came 
to me to come straight back here to die. A man wants to 
die among his own people. They were all that ever meant 
anything to me — they have that to boast of. ... I loved 
this city once. To die anywhere else . . . why, it was mean- 
ingless, a burlesque on death. I looked at my face in the 
glass ; my own mother would not have known me. And so I 
came straight to Jennie Paynter’s, such was my whim . . . 
whom I held on my knee fifty years ago. 

“. . . Oh, it’s been funny ... so funny. ... to sit at 
that intolerable table, and hear poor old Brooke on Recon- 
struction. 1 

“And I ’ve wondered what little Jennie Pay nter would do, 
if I had risen on one of these occasions and spoken my name 
to the table. How I Ve hated her — hated the look and sight 
of her — and all the while embracing it for dear life. She has 
told me much that she never knew I listened to — many a 
bit about old friends . . . forty years since I ’d heard their 
names. And Brooke has told me much, the doting old ass. 

“But the life grew unbearable to a man of my temper. I 
could afford the decency of privacy in my old age. For I 
had worked hard and saved since. . . . 

“And then you came ... a scholar and a gentleman.” 

It was quite dark in the room. Surface’s voice had sud- 
denly changed. The bitterness faded out of it; it became 
gentler than Queed had ever heard it. 

“I did not find you out at once. My life had made me 
unsocial — and out of the Nazareth of that house I never 
looked for any good to come. But when once I took note of 
you, each day I saw you clearer and truer. I saw you fight- 


288 QUEED 

ing, and asking no odds — for elbow-room to do your own 
work, for your way up on the newspaper, for bodily strength 
and health — everywhere I saw you, you were fighting in- 
domitably. I have always loved a fighter. You were young 
and a stranger, alone like me; you stirred no memories of 
a past that now, in my age, I would forget; your face was 
the face of honor and truth. I thought: What a blessing if 
I could make a friend of this young man for the little while 
that is left me! . . . And you have been a blessing and a 
joy — more than you can dream. And now you will not cast 
me off, like the others. ... I do not know the words with 
which to try to thank you. ...” 

“Oh, don’t,” came Queed’s voice hastily out of the dark. 
“There is no question of thanks here.” 

He got up, lit the lamps, pulled down the shade. The old 
man lay back in his chair, his hands gripping its arms, the 
lamplight full upon him. Never had Queed seen him look 
less inspiring to affection. His black cap had gotten pushed 
to one side, which both revealed a considerable area of hair- 
less head, and imparted to the whole face an odd and rakish 
air; the Italian eyes did not wholly match with the softness 
of his voice; the thin-lipped mouth under the long auburn 
mustache looked neither sorrowful nor kind. It was Queed’s 
lifelong habit never to look back with vain regrets; and he 
needed all of his resolution now. 

He stood in front of the man whose terrible secret he had 
surprised, and outwardly he was as calm as ever. 

“Professor Nicolovius,” he said, with a faint emphasis 
upon the name, “all this is as though it had never passed 
between us. And now let’s go and get some supper.” 

Surface rose to his height and took Queed’s hand in a grip 
like iron. His eyes glistened with sudden moisture. 

“God bless you, boy! You’re a man /” 

It had been a memorable conversation in the life of both 
men, opening up obvious after-lines of more or less moment- 
ous thought. Yet each of them, as it happened, neglected 


QUEED 289 

these lines for a corollary detail of apparently much less seri- 
ousness, and pretty nearly the same detail at that. For Sur- 
face sat long that evening, meditating how he might most 
surely break up the friendship between his young friend and 
Sharlee Weyland; while Queed, all during his busy hours at 
the office, found his thoughts of Nicolovius dominated by 
speculations as to what Miss Weyland would say, if she knew 
that he had formed a lifelong compact with the man who had 
betrayed her father’s friendship and looted her own fortune. 


XXIII 

Of the Bill for the Reformatory , and its Critical Situation; oj 
West's Second Disappointment with the Rewards of Patriot - 
ism; of the Consolation he found in the most Charming Re- 
soke in the World. 

I N January the legislature met again. All autumn and 
early winter the Post had been pounding without sur- 
cease upon two great issues: first, the reform of the tax- 
laws, and, second, the establishment of a reformatory insti- 
tution for women. It was palpably the resolve of the paper 
that the legislature should not overlook these two measures 
through lack of being shown where its duty lay. 

To the assistant editor had been assigned both campaigns, 
and he had developed his argument with a deadly persistence. 
A legislature could no more ignore him than you could ig- 
nore a man who is pounding you over the head with a bed- 
slat. Queed had proved his cases in a dozen ways, histor- 
ically and analogically, politically, morally, and scientifically, 
socially and sociologically. Then, for luck, he proceeded 
to run through the whole list again a time or two; and 
now faithful readers of the Post cried aloud for mercy, ask- 
ing each other what under the sun had got into the paper 
that it thus massacred and mutilated the thrice-slain. 

But the Post , aided by the press of the State which had been 
captivated by its ringing logic, continued its merciless fire, 
and, as it proved, not insanely. For when the legislature 
came together, it turned out to be one of those “economy” 
sessions, periodically thrust down the throats of even the 
wiliest politicians. Not “progress ” was its watchword, but 
“wise retrenchment.” Every observer of events, espe- 
cially in states where one party has been long in control, is 
familiar with these recurrent manifestations. There is a long 


QUEED 291 

period of systematic reduplication of the offices, multiplying 
generosity to the faithful, and enormous geometrical pro- 
gression of the public payroll. Some mishap, one day, 
focuses attention upon the princely totalities of the law-mak- 
ing spenders, and a howl goes up from the “sovereigns,” who, 
as has been wisely observed, never have any power until they 
are mad. The party managers, always respectful to an angry 
electorate, thereupon announce that, owing to the wonder- 
ful period of progress and expansion brought about by their 
management, the State can afford to slow up for a brief 
period, hold down expenses and enjoy its (party-made) pros- 
perity. This strikes the “ keynote” for the next legislature, 
which pulls a long face, makes a tremendous noise about 
1 ‘economy,” and possibly refrains from increasing expenses, 
or even shades them down about a dollar and a half. Flushed 
with their victory, the innocent sovereigns return, Cincin- 
natus-wise, to their plows, and the next session of the legis- 
lature, relieved of that suspicionful scrutiny so galling to men 
of spirit, proceeds to cut the purse-strings loose with a whoop. 

Such a brief spasm had now seized the State. Expenses had 
doubled and redoubled with a velocity which caused even 
hardened prodigals to view with alarm. The number of com- 
missions, boards, assistant inspectors, and third deputy 
clerks was enormous, far larger than anybody realized. If 
you could have taken a biological cross-section through the 
seat of State Government, you would doubtless have dis- 
covered a most amazing number of unobtrusive gentlemen 
with queer little titles and odd little duties, sitting silent and 
sleek under their cover; their hungry little mouths affixed 
last year to the public breast, or two years ago, or twenty, 
and ready to open in fearful wailing if anybody sought to 
pluck them off. In an aggregate way, attention had been 
called to them during the gubernatorial campaign of the 
summer. Attacks from the rival stump had, of course, been 
successfully “answered” by the loyal leaders and party press. 
But the bare statement of the annual expenditures, as com- 
pared with the annual expenditures of ten years ago, neces- 


292 QUEED 

sarily stood, and in cold type it looked bad. Therefore the 
legislature met now for an “economy session.” The public 
was given to understand that every penny would have to 
give a strict account of itself before it would receive a pass 
from the treasury, and that public institutions, asking for in- 
creased support, could consider themselves lucky if they did 
not find their appropriations scaled down by a fourth or so. 

The Post's tax reform scheme went through with a bang. 
Out of loose odds and ends of vague discontent, Queed had 
succeeded in creating a body of public sentiment that be- 
came invincible. Moreover, this scheme cost nothing. On the 
contrary, by a rearrangement of items and a stricter system 
of assessment, it promised, as the Post frequently remarked, 
to put hundreds of thousands into the treasury. But the re- 
formatory was a horse of a totally different color. Here was 
a proposal, for a mere supposititious moral gain, evanescent 
as air, to take a hundred thousand dollars of hard money 
out of the crib, and saddle the State with an annual obliga- 
tion, to boot. An excellent thing in itself, but a most unrea- 
sonable request of an economy session, said the organization 
leaders. In fact, this hundred thousand dollars happened 
to be precisely the hundred thousand dollars they needed 
to lubricate “the organization,” and discharge, by some 
choice new positions, a few honorable obligations incurred 
during the campaign. 

Now it was written in the recesses of the assistant edi- 
tor’s being, those parts of him which he never thought of 
mentioning to anybody, that the reformatory bill must pass. 
Various feelings had gradually stiffened an early general ap- 
proval into a rock-ribbed resolve. It was on a closely allied 
theme that he had first won his editorial spurs — the theme 
of Klinker’s “blaggards,” who made reformatories necessary. 
That was one thing: a kind of professional sentiment which 
the sternest scientist need not be ashamed to acknowledge. 
And then, beyond that, his many talks with Klinker had in- 
vested the campaign for the reformatory with a warmth of 
meaning which was without precedent in his experience. 


QUEED 293 

This was, in fact, his first personal contact with the suffering 
and sin of the world, his first grapple with a social problem 
in the raw. Two years before, when he had offered to write 
an article on this topic for the Assistant Secretary of Chari- 
ties, his interest in a reformatory had been only the scientific 
interest which the trained sociologist feels in all the enginery 
of social reform. But now this institution had become in- 
dissolubly connected in Queed ’s mind with the case of Eva 
Bernheimer, whom Buck Klinker knew, Eva Bernheimer 
who was “in trouble” at sixteen, and had now “dropped 
out.” A reformatory had become in his thought a living in- 
strument to catch the Eva Bernheimers of this world, and 
effectually prevent them from dropping out. 

And apart from all this, here was the first chance he had 
ever had to do a service for Sharlee Weyland. 

However, the bill stuck obstinately in committee. Now 
the session was more than half over, February was nearly 
gone, and there it still stuck. And when it finally came out, 
it was evidently going to be a toss of a coin whether it would 
he passed by half a dozen votes, or beaten by an equal num- 
ber. But there was not the slightest doubt that the great ma- 
jority of the voters, so far as they were interested in it at all, 
wanted it passed, and the tireless Post was prodding the 
committee every other day, observing that now was the time, 
etc. , and demanding in a hundred forceful ways, how about it? 

With cheerfulness and confidence had West intrusted these 
important matters to his young assistant. Not only was 
Queed an acknowledged authority on both taxation and 
penological science, but he had enjoyed the advantage of 
writing articles on both themes under Colonel Cowles’s per- 
sonal direction. The Colonel’s bones were dust, his pen was 
rust, his soul was with the saints, we trust; but his gallant 
spirit went marching on. He towered out of memory a demi- 
god, and what he said and did in his lifetime had become 
as the law of the Medes and Persians now. 

But there was never any dispute about the division of edi- 
torial honors on the Post , anyway. The two young men, in 


294 QUEED 

fact, were so different in every way that their relations were 
a model of mutual satisfaction. Never once did Queed’s 
popular chief seek to ride over his valued helper, or deny him 
his full share of opportunity in the department. If anything, 
indeed, he leaned quite the other way. For West lacked the 
plodder’s faculty for indefatigable application. Like some 
rare and splendid bird, if he was kept too closely in captiv- 
ity, his spirit sickened and died. 

It is time to admit frankly that West, upon closer con- 
tact with newspaper work, had been somewhat disillusioned, 
and who that knows will be surprised at that? To begin 
with, he had been used to much freedom, and his new duties 
were extremely confining. They began soon after breakfast, 
and no man could say at what hour they would end. The 
night work, in especial, he abhorred. It interfered with much 
more amusing things that had hitherto beguiled his even- 
ings, and it also conflicted with sleep, of which he required a 
good deal. There was, too, a great amount of necessary but 
most irksome drudgery connected with his editorial labors. 
Because the Post was a leader of public thought in the State, 
and as such enjoyed a national standing, West found it ne- 
cessary to read a vast number of papers, ko keep up with what 
was going on. He was also forced to write many perfunctory 
articles on subjects which did not interest him in the least, 
and about which, to tell the truth, he knew very little. 
There were also a great many letters either to be answered, 
or to be prepared for publication in the People’s Forum 
column, and these letters were commonly written by dull 
asses who had no idea what they were talking about. Prosy 
people were always coming in with requests or complaints, 
usually the latter. First and last there was a quantity of 
grinding detail which, like the embittered old fogeyism of 
the Blaines College trustees, had not appeared on his rosy 
prospect in the Maytime preceding. 

With everything else favorable, West would cheerfully 
have accepted these things, as being inextricably embedded 
in the nature of the work. But unfortunately, everything else 


QUEED 295 

was not favorable. Deeper than the grind of the routine de- 
tail, was the constant opposition and adverse criticism to 
which his newspaper, like every other one, was incessantly 
subjected. It has long been a trite observation that no reader 
of any newspaper is so humble as not to be outspokenly con- 
fident that he could run that paper a great deal better than 
those who actually are running it. Every upstanding man 
who pays a cent for a daily journal considers that he buys the 
right to abuse it, nay incurs the manly duty of abusing it. 
Every editor knows that the highest praise he can expect is 
silence. If his readers are pleased with his remarks, they 
nobly refrain from comment. But if they disagree with one 
jot or tittle of his high-speed dissertations, he must be pre- 
pared to have quarts of ink squirted at him forthwith. 

Now this was exactly the reverse of Editor West’s pre- 
ferences. He liked criticism of him to be silent, and praise 
of him to be shouted in the market-place. For all his good- 
humor and poise, the steady fire of hostile criticism fretted 
him intensely. He did not like to run through his exchanges 
and find his esteemed contemporaries combatting his posi- 
tions, sometimes bitterly or contemptuously, and always, 
so it seemed to him, unreasonably and unfairly. He did not 
like to have friends stop him on the street to ask why in 
the name of so-and-so he had said such-and-such ; or, more 
trying still, have them pass him with an icy nod, simply be- 
cause he, in some defense of truth and exploitation of the 
uplift, had fearlessly trod upon their precious little toes. He 
did not like to have his telephone ring with an angry protest, 
or to get a curt letter from a railroad president ( supposedly 
a good friend of the paper’s) desiring to know by return 
mail whether the clipping therewith inclosed represented 
the Post's attitude toward the railroads. A steady proces- 
sion of things like these wears on the nerves of a sensitive 
man, and West, for all his confident exterior, was a sensitive 
man. A heavy offset in the form of large and constant pub- 
lic eulogies was needed to balance these annoyances, and 
such an offset was not forthcoming. 


296 QUEED, 

West was older now, a little less ready in his enthusiasms, 
a shade less pleased with the world, a thought less sure of the 
eternal merits of the life of uplift. In fact he was thirty-three 
years old, and he w had moments, now and then, when he won- 
dered if he were going forward as rapidly and surely as he 
had a right to expect. This was the third position he had 
had since he left college, and it was his general expectation 
to graduate into a fourth before a great while. Semple fre- 
quently urged him to return to the brokerage business; he 
had made an unquestioned success there at any rate. As to 
Blaines College, he could not be so confident. The college 
had opened this year with an increased enrollment of twenty- 
five ; and though West privately felt certain that his succes- 
sor was only reaping where he himself had sown, you could 
not be certain that the low world would so see it. As for the 
Post, it was a mere stop-gap, a momentary halting-place 
where he preened for a far higher flight. There were many 
times that winter when West wondered if Plonny Neal, 
whom he rarely or never saw, could possibly have failed to 
notice how prominently he was in line. 

But these doubts and dissatisfactions left little mark 
upon the handsome face and buoyant manner. Changes in 
West, if there were any, were of the slightest. Certainly 
his best friends, like those two charming young women, 
Miss Weyland and Miss Avery, found him as delightful 
as ever. 

In these days, West’s mother desired him to marry. After 
the cunning habit of women, she put the thought before 
him daily, under many an alluring guise, by a thousand en- 
gaging approaches. West himself warmed to the idea. He 
had drunk freely of the pleasures of single blessedness, 
under the most favorable conditions; was now becoming 
somewhat jaded with them; and looked with approval upon 
the prospect of a little nest, or indeed one not so little, duly 
equipped with the usual faithful helpmeet who should share 
his sorrows, joys, etc. The nest he could feather decently 
enough himself; the sole problem, a critical one in its way, 


QUEED 297 

was to decide upon the helpmeet. West was neither college 
boy nor sailor. His heart was no harem of beautiful faces. 
Long since, he had faced the knowledge that there were but 
two girls in the world for him. Since, however, the church 
and the law allowed him but one, he must more drastically 
monogamize his heart; and this he found enormously diffi- 
cult. It was the poet’s triangle with the two dear charmers 
over again. 

One blowy night in late February, West passed by the 
brown stone palace which Miss Avery’s open-handed papa, 
from Mauch Chunk, occupied on a three years’ lease with 
privilege of buying ; and repaired to the more modest estab- 
lishment where dwelt Miss Weyland and her mother. The 
reformatory issue was then at the touch. The bill had come 
out of committee with a six-and-six vote ; rumor had it that 
it would be called up in the House within the week; and it 
now appeared as though a push of a feather’s weight might 
settle its fate either way. Sharlee and West spoke first of 
this. She was eagerly interested, and praised him warmly 
for the interest and valuable help of the Post. Her confi- 
dence was unshaken that the bill would go through, though 
by a narrow margin. 

“The opposition is of the deadliest sort,” she admitted, 
“because it is silent. It is silent because it knows that its 
only argument — all this economy talk — is utterly insin- 
cere. But Mr. Dayne knows where the opposition is — 
and the way he goes after it! Never believe any more that 
ministers can’t lobby!” 

“Probably the root of the whole matter,” offered West, 
easing himself back into his chair, “is that the machine fel- 
lows want this particular hundred thousand dollars in their 
business.” 

“Is n’t it horrid that men can be so utterly selfish? You 
don’t think they will really venture to do that?” 

“ I honestly don’t know. You see I have turned it all over 
to Queed, and I confess I have n’t studied it with anything 
like the care he has.”' 


298 QUEED 

Sharlee, who was never too engrossed in mere subjects to 
notice people’s tones, said at once : “Oh, I am sure they won’t 
dare do it,” and immediately changed the subject. “You 
are going to the German, of course?” 

“Oh, surely, unless the office pinches me.” 

“You mustn’t let it pinch you — the last of the year, 
heigho! Did you hear about Robert Byrd and Miss — no, 
I won’t give you her name — and the visiting girl?” 

“Never a word.” 

“She’s a thoroughly nice girl, but — well, not pretty, I 
should say, and I don’t think she has had much fun here. 
Beverley and Robert Byrd were here the other night. 
Why will they hunt in pairs, do you know? I told Beverley 
that he positively must take this girl to the German. He 
quarreled and complained a good deal at first, but finally 
yielded like a dear boy. Then he seemed to enter in the nicest 
way into the spirit of our altruistic design. He said that 
after he had asked the girl, it would be very nice if Robert 
should ask her too. He would be refused, of course, but the 
girl would have the pleasant feeling of getting a rush, and 
Robert would boost his standing as a philanthropist, all with- 
out cost to anybody. Robert was good-natured, and fell in 
with the plan. Three days later he telephoned me, simply 
furious. He had asked the girl — you know he has n’t been to 
a German for five years — and she accepted at once with 
tears of gratitude.” 

“But how — ?” 

“Of course Beverley never asked her. He simply trapped 
Robert, which he would rather do than anything else in the 
world.” 

West shouted. “Speaking of Germans,” he said presently, 
“I am making up my list for next year — the early bird, 
you know. How many will you give me?” 

“Six.” 

“Will you kindly sign up the papers to-night?” 

“No — my mother won’t let me. I might sign up for 
one if you want me to.” 


QUEED 299 

“What possible use has your mother for the other five 
that is better than giving them all to me?” 

“ Perhaps she does n’t want to spoil other men for me.” 

West leaned forward, interest fully awakened on his 
charming face, and Sharlee watched him, pleased with her- 
self. 

It had occurred to her, in fact, that Mr. West was tired; 
and this was the solemn truth. He was a man of large re- 
sponsibilities, with a day’s work behind him and a night’s 
work ahead of him. His personal conception of the way to 
occupy the precious interval did not include the conscien- 
tious talking of shop. Jaded and brain-fagged, what he de- 
sired was to be amused, beguiled, soothed, fascinated, even 
flattered a bit, mayhap. Sharlee’s theory of hospitality was 
that a guest was entitled to any type of conversation he had 
a mind to. Having dismissed her own troubles, she now 
proceeded to make herself as agreeable as she knew how ; and 
he has read these pages to little purpose who does not know 
that that was very agreeable indeed. 

West, at least, appeared to think so. He lingered, charmed, 
until quarter past eleven o’clock, at which hour Mrs. Wey- 
land, in the room above, began to let the tongs and poker fall 
about with unmistakable significance ; and went out into the 
starlit night radiant with the certainty that his heart, after 
long wandering, had found its true mate at last. 


XXIV 


Sharlee' s Parlor on Another Evening ; how One Caller outsat 
Two , and why; also , how Sharlee looked in her Mirror for a 
Long Time , and why. 

N the very night after West made his happy discov- 



ery, namely on the evening of February 24, at about 


twenty minutes of nine, Sharlee Weyland’s doorbell 
rang, and Mr. Queed was shown into her parlor. 

His advent was a complete surprise to SFarlee. For 
these nine months, her suggestion that he should call upon 
her had lain utterly neglected. Since the Reunion she had 
seen him but four times, twice on the street, and once at each 
of their offices, when the business of the reformatory had hap- 
pened to draw them together. The last of these meetings, 
which had been the briefest, was already six weeks old. In 
all of her acquaintance with him, extending now over two 
years and a half, this was the first time that he had ever 
sought her out with intentions that were, presumably, de- 
liberately social. 

The event, Sharlee felt in greeting him, could not have 
happened, more unfortunately. Queed found the parlor oc- 
cupied, and the lady’s attention engaged, by two young men 
before him. One of them was Beverley Byrd, who saluted 
him somewhat moodily. The other was a Mr. Miller — 
no relation to Miss Miller of Mrs. Paynter’s, though a faint 
something in his ensemble lent plausibility to that conjec- 
ture — a newcomer to the city who, having been introduced 
to Miss Weyland somewhere, had taken the liberty of call- 
ing without invitation or permission. It was impossible for 
Sharlee to be rude to anybody under her own roof, but it is 
equally impossible to describe her manner to Mr. Miller as 
exactly cordial. He himself was a cordial man, mustached 


QUEED 301 

and anecdotal, who assumed rather more confidence than he 
actually felt. Beverley Byrd, who did not always hunt in 
pairs, had taken an unwonted dislike to him at sight. He did 
not consider him a suitable person to be calling on Sharlee, 
and he had been doing his best, with considerable deft- 
ness and success, to deter him from feeling too much at 
home. 

Byrd wore a beautiful dinner jacket. So did Mr. Miller, 
with a gray tie, and a gray, brass-buttoned vest, to boot. 
Queed wore his day clothes of blue, which were not so new 
as they were the day Sharlee first saw them, on the rustic 
bridge near the little cemetery. He had, of course, taken it 
for granted that he would find Miss Weyland alone. Never- 
theless, he did not appear disconcerted by the sudden dis- 
covery of his mistake, or even by Mr. Miller’s glorious 
waistcoat; he was as grave as ever, but showed no signs of 
embarrassment. Sharlee caught herself observing him closely, 
as he shook hands with the two men and selected a chair 
for himself; she concluded that constant contact with the 
graces of Charles Gardiner West had not been without its 
effect upon him. He appeared decidedly more at his ease 
than Mr. Miller, for instance, and he had another valuable 
possession which that personage lacked, namely, the face 
of a gentleman. 

But it was too evident that he felt little sense of responsi- 
bility for the maintenance of the conversation. He sat back 
in a chair of exceptionable comfortableness, and allowed 
Beverley Byrd to discourse with him ; a privilege which Byrd 
exercised fitfully, for his heart was in the talk that Sharlee 
was dutifully supporting with Mr. Miller. Into this talk 
he resolutely declined to be drawn, but his ear was alert for 
opportunities — which came not infrequently — to thrust 
in a polished oar to the discomfiture of the intruder. 

Not that he would necessarily care to do it, but the runner 
could read Mr. Miller, without a glass, at one hundred paces’ 
distance. He was of the climber type, a self-made man in the 
earlier and less inspiring stages of the making. Culture had 


302 QUEED 

a dangerous fascination for him. He adored to talk of books; 
a rash worship, it seemed, since his but bowing acquaintance 
with them trapped him frequently into mistaken identities 
over which Sharlee with difficulty kept a straight face, while 
Byrd palpably rejoiced. 

“You know Thanatopsis, of course,” he would ask, with 
a rapt and glowing eye — “Lord Byron’s beautiful poem on 
the philosophy of life? Now that is my idea of what poetry 
ought to be, Miss Weyland. ...” 

And Beverley Byrd, breaking his remark to Queed off 
short in the middle, would turn to Sharlee with a face of 
studious calm and say: — 

“Will you ever forget, Sharlee, the first time you read the 
other Thanatopsis — the one by William Cullen Bryant? 
Don’t you remember how it looked — with the picture of 
Bryant — in the old Fifth Reader?” 

Mr. Miller proved that he could turn brick-red, but he 
learned nothing from experience. 

In time, the talk between the two young men, which had 
begun so desultorily, warmed up. Byrd had read something 
besides the Fifth Reader, and Queed had discovered before 
to-night that he had ideas to express. Their conversation 
progressed with waxing interest, from the President’s mes- 
sage to the causes of the fall of Rome, and thence by wholly 
logical transitions to the French Revolution and Woman’s 
Suffrage. Byrd gradually became so absorbed that he al- 
most, but not quite, neglected to keep Mr. Miller in his 
place. As for Queed, he spoke in defense of the “revolt of 
woman” for five minutes without interruption, and his mas- 
terly sentences finally drew the silence and attention of 
Mr. Miller himself. 

“Who is that fellow?” he asked in an undertone. “I 
did n’t catch his name.” 

Sharlee told him. 

“He’s got a fine face,” observed Mr. Miller. “I’ve made 
quite a study of faces, and I never saw one just like his — 
so absolutely on one note, if you know what I mean.” 


QUEED 303 

“What note is that?” asked Sharlee, interested by him 
for the only time so long as they both did live. 

“Well, it’s not always easy to put a name to it, but I’d 
call it . . . honesty. — If you know what I mean.” 

Mr. Miller stayed until half-past ten. The door had hardly 
shut upon him when Byrd, too, rose. 

“Oh, don’t go, Beverley! ” protested Sharlee. “ I ’ve hardly 
spoken to you.” 

“ Duty calls,” said Byrd. “I’m going to walk home with 
Mr. Miller.” 

“ Beverley — don’t! You were quite horrid enough while 
he was here.” 

“But you spoiled it all by being so unnecessarily agree- 
able! It is my business, as your friend and well-wisher, to see 
that he does n’t carry away too jolly a memory of his visit. 
Take lunch downtown with me to-morrow, won’t you, Mr. 
Queed — at the Business Men’s Club? I want to finish our 
talk about the Catholic nations, and why they’re decadent.” 

Queed said that he would, and Byrd hurried away to over- 
take Mr. Miller. Or, perhaps that gentleman was only a 
pretext, and the young man’s experienced eye had read that 
any attempt to outsit the learned assistant editor was fore- 
doomed to failure. 

“ I ’mso glad you stayed,” said Sharlee, as Queed reseated 
himself. “I shouldn’t have liked not to exchange a word 
with you on your first visit here.” 

“Oh! This is not my first visit, you may remember.” 

“Your first voluntary visit, perhaps I should have said.” 

He let his eyes run over the room, and she could see that 
he was thinking, half-unconsciously, of the last time when 
he and she had sat here. 

“I had no idea of going,” he said absently, “till I had 
the opportunity of speaking to you.” 

A brief silence followed, which clearly did not embarrass 
him, at any rate. Sharlee, feeling the necessity of breaking 
it, still puzzling herself with speculations as to what had 
put it into his head to come, said at random: — 


304 QUEED 

“Oh, do tell me — how is old Pere Goriot?” 

“Pere Goriot? I never heard of him.” 

“Oh, forgive me! It is a name we used to have, long ago, 
for Professor Nicolovius.” 

A shadow crossed his brow. “He is extremely well, I be- 
lieve.” 

“You are still glad that you ran off with him to live tUe- 
d-tete in a bridal cottage?” 

“Oh, I suppose so. Yes, certainly!” 

His frank face betrayed that the topic was unwelcome to 
him. For he hated all secrets, and this secret, from this 
girl, was particularly obnoxious to him. And beyond all 
that part of it, how could he analyze for anybody his peri- 
ods of strong revolt against his association with Henry G. 
Surface, followed by longer and stranger periods when, 
quite apart from the fact that his word was given and 
regrets were vain, his consciousness embraced it as having a 
certain positive value ? 

He rose restlessly, and in rising his eye fell upon the little 
clock on the mantel. 

“Good heavens!” broke from him. “I had no idea it was 
so late! I must go directly. Directly.” 

“Oh, no, you must n’t think of it. Your visit to me has 
just begun — all this time you have been calling on Bever- 
ley Byrd.” 

“Why do you think I came here to-night?” he asked 
abruptly. 

Sharlee, from her large chair, smiled. “7 think to see me.” 

“Oh! — Yes, naturally, but — ” 

“Well, I think this is the call plainly due me from my 
Reunion party last year.” 

“ No ! Not at all ! At the same time, it has been since that 
day that I have had you on my mind so much.” 

He said this in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, but a cer- 
tain nervousness had broken through into his manner. He 
took a turn up and down the room, and returned suddenly 
to his seat. 


QUEED 305 

“Oh, have you had me on your mind?” 

“Do you remember my saying that day,” he began, res- 
olutely, “that I was not sure whether I had got the better 
of you or you had got the better of me?” 

“ I remember very well.” 

“Well, I have come to tell you that — you have won.” 

He had plucked a pencil from the arsenal of them in his 
breast-pocket, and with it was beating a noiseless tattoo on 
his open left palm. With an effort he met her eyes. 

“I say you were right,” came from him nervously. “Don’t 
you hear?” 

“Was I? Won’t you tell me just what you mean?” 

“Don’t you know?” 

“Really I don’t think I do. You see, when I used that 
expression that day, I was speaking only of the editorship — ” 

“But I was speaking of a theory of life. After all, the two 
things seem to have been bound together rather closely — 
just as you said.” 

He restored his pencil to his pocket, palpably pulled him- 
self together, and proceeded: 

“Oh, my theory was wholly rational — far more rational 
than yours; rationally it was perfect. It was a wholly log- 
ical recoil from the idleness, the lack of purpose, the slipshod 
self-indulgence under many names that I saw, and see, 
everywhere about me. I have work to do — serious work 
of large importance — and it seemed to me my duty to 
carry it through at all hazards. I need not add that it still 
seems so. Yet it was a life’s work, already well along, and 
there was no need for me to pay an excessive price for mere 
speed. I elected to let everything go but intellect; I felt that 
I must do so; and in consequence, by the simplest sort of 
natural law, all the rest of me was shriveling up — had 
shriveled up, you will say. Yet I knew very well that my 
intellect was not the biggest part of me. I have always 
understood that. . . . Still, it seems that I required you to 
rediscover it for me in terms of everyday life. ...” 

“No, no!” she interrupted, “I did n’t do that. Most of 


306 QUEED 

it you did yourself. The start, the first push — don’t you 
know? — it came from Fifi.” 

“Well,” he said slowly, “what was Fifi but you again in 
miniature?” 

“A great deal else,” said Sharlee. 

Her gaze fell. She sunk her chin upon her hand, and 
a silence followed, while before the mind’s eye of each 
rose a vision of Fifi, with her wasted cheeks and great 
eyes. 

“As I say, I sacrificed everything to reason,” continued 
Queed, obviously struggling against embarrassment, “and 
yet pure reason was never my ideal. I have impressed you 
as a thoroughly selfish person — you have told |me that — 
and so far as my immediate environment is concerned, I 
have been, and am. So it may surprise you to be told that a 
life of service has been from the beginning my ambition and 
my star. Of course I have always interpreted service in the 
broadest sense, in terms of the world ; that was why I deliber- 
ately excluded all purely personal applications of it. Yet it 
is from a proper combination of reason with — the sociolo- 
gist’s ‘ consciousness of kind’ — fellow-feeling, sympathy, if 
you prefer, the,t is derived a life of fullest efficiency. I have 
always understood the truth of this formula as applied to 
peoples. It seems that I — rather missed its force as to in- 
dividuals. I — I am ready to admit that an individual life 
can draw an added meaning — and richness from a serv- 
ice, not of the future, but of the present — not of the race 
but . . . well, of the unfortunate on the doorstep. Do you 
understand,” he asked abruptly, “what I am trying to tell 
you?” 

She assured him that she understood perfectly. 

A slow painful color came into his face. 

“Then you appreciate the nature and the size of the debt 
I owe you.” 

“Oh, no, no, no! If I have done anything at all to help 
you,” said Sharlee, considerably moved, “then I am very 
glad and proud. But as for what you speak of . . . no, no. 


QUEED 307 

people always do these things for themselves. The help 
comes from within — ” 

“Oh, don't talk like that!” broke from him. “You throw 
out the idea somehow that I consider that I have undergone 
some remarkable conversion and transformation. I have n’t 
done anything of the sort. I am just the same as I always 
was. Just the same. . . . Only now I am willing to admit, 
as a scientific truth, that time given to things not in them- 
selves directly productive, can be made to pay a good divi- 
dend. If what I said led you to think that I meant more than 
that, then I have, for once, expressed myself badly. I tell 
you this,” he went on hurriedly, “simply because you once 
interested yourself in trying to convince me of the truth of 
these views. Some of the things you said that night man- 
aged to stick. They managed to stick. Oh, I give you that. 
I suppose you might say that they gradually became like 
mottoes or texts — not scientific, of course . . . personal. 
Therefore, I thought it only fair to tell you that while my 
cosmos is still mostly Ego — I suppose everybody’s is in 
one way or another — I have — made changes, so that I am 
no longer wholly out of relation with life.” 

“I am glad you wanted to tell me,” said Sharlee, “but 
I have known it for — oh, the longest time.” 

“In a certain sense,” he hurried on — “quite a different 
sense — I should say that your talk — the only one of the 
kind I ever had — did for me the sort of thing . . . 
that most men’s mothers do for them when they are 
young.” 

She made no reply. 

“Perhaps,” he said, almost defiantly, “you don’t like my 
saying that?” 

“Oh, yes! I like it very much.” 

“And yet,” he said, “I don’t think of you as I fancy a 
man would think of his mother, or even of his sister. It is 
rather extraordinary. It has become clear to me that you 
have obtained a unique place in my thought — in my re- 
gard. Well, good-night.” 


308 QUEED 

She looked up at him, without, however, quite meeting 
his eyes. 

“Oh! Do you think you must go?” 

“Well — yes. I have said everything that I came to say. 
Did you want me to stay particularly?” 

“Not if you feel that you should n’t. You’ve been very 
good to give me a whole evening, as it is.” 

“ I ’ll tell you one more thing before I go.” 

He took another turn up and down the room, and halted 
frowning in front of her. 

“I am thinking of making an experiment in practical so- 
cial work next year. What would be your opinion of a free 
night-school for working boys?” 

Sharlee, greatly surprised by the question, said that the 
field was a splendid one. 

He went on at once: “Technical training, of course, 
would be the nominal basis of it. I could throw in, also, 
boxing and physical culture. Buck Klinker would be de- 
lighted to help there. By the way, you must know Klinker: 
he has some first-rate ideas about what to do for the working 
population. Needless to say, both the technical and phys- 
ical training would be only baits to draw attendance, 
though both could be made very valuable. My main plan 
is along a new line. I want to teach what no other school 
attempts — only one thing, but that to be hammered in so 
that it can never be forgotten.” 

“What is that?” 

“You might sum it all up as the doctrine of individual 
responsibility.” 

She echoed his term inquiringly, and he made a very large 
gesture. 

“I want to see if I can teach boys that they are not in- 
dividuals — not unrelated atoms in a random universe. 
Teach them that they live in a world of law — of evolution 
by law — that they are links, every one of them, in a splen- 
did chain that has been running since life began, and will run 
on to the end of time. Knock into their heads that no chain 


QUEED 309 

is stronger than its weakest link, and that this means them . 
Don’t you see what a powerful socializing force there is in 
the sense of personal responsibility, if cultivated in the right 
direction? A boy may be willing to take his chances on go- 
ing to the bad — economically and socially, as well as mor- 
ally — if he thinks that it is only his own personal concern. 
But he will hesitate when you once impress upon him that, 
in doing so, he is blocking the whole magnificent procession. 
My plan would be to develop these boys’ social efficiency by 
stamping upon them the knowledge that the very humblest 
of them holds a trusteeship of cosmic importance.” 

“I understand. . . . How splendid! — not to practice 
sociology on them, but to teach it to them — ” 

“But could we get the boys?” 

She felt that the unconsciousness with which he took her 
into partnership was one of the finest compliments that had 
ever been paid her. 

“Oh, I think so! The Department has all sorts of con- 
nections, as well as lots of data which would be useful in that 
way. How Mr. Dayne will welcome you as an ally! And I, 
too. I think it is fine of you, Mr. Queed, so generous and 
kind, to — ” 

“ Not at all ! Not in the least ! I beg you,” he interrupted, 
irritably, “not to go on misunderstanding me. I propose this 
simply as an adjunct to my own work. It is simply in the 
nature of a laboratory exercise. In five years the experiment 
might enable me to check up some of my own conclusions, 
and so prove very valuable to me.” 

“In the meantime the experiment will have done a great 
deal for a certain number of poor boys — unfortunates on 
your doorstep. . . .” 

“That,” he said shortly, “is as it may be. But — ” 

“Mr. Queed,” said Sharlee, “why are you honest in every 
way but one? Why won’t you admit that you have thought 
of this school because you would like to do something to 
help in the life of this town?” 

“Because I am not doing anything of the sort! Why will 


310 QUEED 

you harp on that one string? Good heavens! Aren’t you 
yourself the author of the sentiment that a sociologist 
ought to have some first-hand knowledge of the problems of 
society?” 

Standing, he gazed down at her, frowning insistently, bent 
upon staring her out of countenance; and she looked up at 
him with a Didymus smile which slowly grew. Presently his 
eyes fell. 

“I cannot undertake,” he said, in his stiffest way, “to 
analyze all my motives at all times for your satisfaction. 
They have nothing whatever to do with the present matter. 
The sole point up for discussion is the practical question of 
getting such a school started. Keep it in mind, will you? 
Give some thought as to ways and means. Your experience 
with the Department should be helpful to me in getting 
the plan launched.” 

“Certainly I will. If you don’t object, I’ll talk with Mr. 
Dayne about it, too. He — ” 

“All right. I don’t object. Well, good-night.” 

Sharlee rose and held out her hand. His expression, as he 
took and shook it, suddenly changed. 

“ I suppose you think I have acquired the habit,” he 
said, with an abrupt recurrence of his embarrassment, “of 
coming to you for counsel and assistance?” 

“Well, why should n’t you?” she answered seriously. “ I 
have had the opportunity and the time to learn some 
things — ” 

“You can’t dismiss your kindness so easily as that.” 

“Oh, I don’t think I have been particularly kind.” 

“Yes, you have. I admit that. You have.” 

He took the conversation with such painful seriousness 
that she was glad to lighten it with a smile. 

“If you persist in thinking so, you might feel like reward- 
ing me by coming to see me soon again.” 

“Yes, yes! I shall come to see you soon again. Certainly. 
Of course,” he added hastily, “it is desirable that I should 
talk with you more at length about my school.” 


QUEED 31 1 

He was staring at her with a conflict of expressions in 
which, curiously enough, pained bewilderment seemed upper- 
most. Sharlee laughed, not quite at her ease. 

“Do you know, I am still hoping that some day you will 
come to see me, not to talk about anything definite — just 
to talk.” 

“As to that,” he replied, “I cannot say. Good-night.” 

Forgetting that he had already shaken hands, he now went 
through with it again. This time the ceremony had unex- 
pected results. For now at the first touch of her hand, a sen- 
sation closely resembling chain-lightning sprang up his arm, 
and tingled violently down through all his person. It was as 
if his arm had not merely fallen suddenly asleep, but was 
singing uproariously in its slumbers. 

“I’m so glad you came,” said Sharlee. 

He retired in a confusion which he was too untrained to 
hide. At the door he wheeled abruptly, and cleared him- 
self, with a white face, of evasions that were torturing his 
conscience. 

“I will not say that a probable benefit to the boys never 
entered into my thoughts about the school. Nor do I say 
that my next visit will be wholly to talk about definite things, 
as you put it. For part of the time, I daresay I should like 
— just to talk.” 

Sharlee went upstairs, and stood for a long time gazing 
at herself in the mirror. Vainly she tried to glean from it 
the answer to a most interesting conundrum : Did Mr. Queed 
still think her very beautiful? 


XXV 


Recording a Discussion about the Reformatory between Editor 
West and his Dog-like Admirer , the City Boss; and a Briefer 
Conversation between West and Prof. Nicolovius' s Boarder. 

lOUT one o’clock the telephone rang sharply, and 



Queed, just arrived for the afternoon work and alone 


^ in the office, answered it. It was the Rev. Mr. 
Dayne, Secretary of the Department of Charities; he had 
learned that the reformatory bill was to be called up in the 
house next day. The double-faced politicians of the ma- 
chine, said Mr. Dayne, with their pretended zeal for econ- 
omy, were desperately afraid of the Post. Would Mr. 
Queed be kind enough to hit a final ringing blow for the right 
in to-morrow’s paper? 

“That our position to-day is as strong as it is,” said the 
kind, firm voice, “is due largely to your splendid work, Mr. 
Queed. I say this gladly, and advisedly. If you will put your 
shoulder to the wheel just once more, I am confident that 
you will push us through. I shall be eternally grateful, and so 
will the State. For it is a question of genuine moral import- 
ance to us all.” 

Mr. Dayne received assurance that Mr. Queed would do 
all that he could for him. He left the telephone rather 
wishing that the assistant editor could sometimes be inspired 
into verbal enthusiasm. But of his abilities the Secretary 
did not entertain the smallest doubt, and he felt that day 
that his long fight for the reformatory was as good as won. 

Hanging up the receiver, Queed leaned back in his swivel 
chair and thoughtfully filled a pipe, which he smoked now- 
adays with an experienced and ripened pleasure. At once he 
relapsed into absorbed thought. Though he answered Mr„ 
Dayne calmly and briefly according to his wont, the youn^ 


QUEED 313 

man’s heart was beating faster with the knowledge that he 
stood at the crisis of his longest and dearest editorial fight. 
He expected to win it. The whole subject, from every con- 
ceivable point of view, was at his fingers’ ends. He knew 
exactly what to say ; his one problem was how to say it in the 
most irresistible way possible. 

Yet Queed, tilted back in his chair, and staring out over 
the wet roofs, was not thinking of the reformatory. He was 
thinking, not of public matters at all, but of the circum- 
stances of his curious life with Henry G. Surface; and his 
thoughts were not agreeable in the least. 

Not that he and the “old professor” did not get along 
well together. It was really surprising how well they did get 
along. Their dynamic interview of last June had at once 
been buried out of sight, and since then their days had 
flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had been 
times when the young man’s thought recoiled from the com- 
pact and the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign 
of it. On the contrary, he found himself mysteriously an- 
swering the growing dependence of the old man with a 
growing sense of responsibility toward him, and discovering 
in the process a curious and subtle kind of compensation. 

What troubled Queed about Nicolovius — as the world 
called him — was his money. He, Queed, was in part living 
on this money, eating it, drinking it, sleeping on it. Of late 
the old man had been spending it with increasing freedom, 
constantly enlarging the comforts of the joint manage. He 
had reached, in fact, a scale of living which continually thrust 
itself on Queed ’s consciousness as quite beyond the savings 
of a poor old school teacher. And if this appearance were 
true, where did the surplus come from? 

The question had knocked unpleasantly at the young 
man’s mind before now. This morning he faced it, and 
pondered deeply. A way occurred to him by which, pos- 
sibly, he might turn a little light upon this problem. He did 
not care to take it; he shrank from doing anything that 
might seem like spying upon the man whose bread he broke 


3H QUEED 

thrice daily. Yet it seemed to him that a point had now 
been reached where he owed his first duty to himself. 

“Come in,” he said, looking around in response to a brisk 
knock upon his shut door; and there entered Plonny Neal, 
whom Queed, through the Mercury, knew very well now. 

“Hi there, Doc! Playin’ you was Horace Greeley?” 

Mr. Neal opened the connecting door into West’s office, 
glanced through, found it empty, and shut the door again. 
Whether he was pleased or the reverse over this discovery, 
his immobile countenance gave no hint; but the fact was 
that he had called particularly to see West on a matter of 
urgent private business. 

“I was on the floor and thought I’d say howdy,” he re- 
marked pleasantly. “Say, Doc, I been readin’ them reform- 
atory drools of yours. Me and all the boys.” 

“I’m glad to hear it. They are certain to do you good.” 

Queed smiled. He had a genuine liking for Mr. Neal, which 
was not affected by the fact that their views differed dia- 
metrically on almost every subject under the sun. 

Mr. Neal smiled, too, more enigmatically, and made a 
large gesture with his unlighted cigar. 

“I ain’t had such good laughs since Tommy Walker, him 
that was going to chase me out of the city f’r the tall timber, 
up and died. But all the same, I hate to see a likely young 
feller sittin’ up nights tryin’ to make a laughin’ stock of him- 
self.” 

“The last laughs are always the best, Mr. Neal. Did you 
ever try any of them? ” 

“You’re beat to a pappyer mash, and whistlin’ to keep 
your courage.” 

“Listen to my whistle day after to-morrow — ” 

But the door had shut on Mr. Neal, who had doubtless 
read somewhere that the proper moment to terminate a call 
is on some telling speech of one’s own. 

“I wonder what he’s up to,” mused Queed. 

He brought his chair to horizontal and addressed himself 
to his reformatory article. He sharpened his pencil ; tangled 


OUEED 315 

his great hand into his hair; and presently put down an 
opening sentence that fully satisfied him, his own sternest 
critic. Then a memory of his visitor returned to his mind, 
and he thought pleasurably: 

“Plonny knows he is beaten. That’s what’s the matter 
with him.” 

Close observers had often noted, however, that that was 
very seldom the matter with Plonny, and bets as to his 
being beaten were always to be placed with diffidence and 
at very long odds. Plonny had no idea whatever of being 
beaten on the reformatory measure : on the contrary, it was 
the reformatory measure which was to be beaten. Possibly 
Mr. Neal was a white-souled patriot chafing under threat- 
ened extravagance in an economy year. Possibly he was 
impelled by more machine-like exigencies, such as the need 
of just that hundred thousand dollars to create a few nice 
new berths for the “ organization.” The man’s motives are 
an immaterial detail. The sole point worth remembering is 
that Plonny Neal had got it firmly in his head that;there 
should be no reformatory legislation that year. 

It was Mr. Neal’s business to know men, and he was es- 
teemed a fine business man. Leaving the assistant editor, 
he sallied forth to find the editor. It might have taken Queed 
an hour to put his hand on West just then. Plonny did it in 
less than six minutes. 

West was at Semple’s (formerly Semple & West’s), where 
he looked in once a day just to see what the market was 
doing. This was necessary, as he sometimes explained, in 
order that the Post's financial articles might have that au- 
thoritativeness which the paper’s position demanded. West 
enjoyed the good man-talk at Semple’s; the atmosphere of 
frank, cheery commercialism made a pleasant relief from the 
rarer altitudes of the uplift. He stood chatting gayly with a 
group of habitues, including some of the best known men of 
the town. All greeted Plonny pleasantly, West cordially. 
None of our foreign critics can write that the American man 
is a moral prude. On two occasions, Plonny had been vin- 


316 QUEED 

dicated before the grand jury by the narrow margin of one 
vote. Yet he was much liked as a human sinner who had no 
pretenses about him, and who told a good story surpassingly 
well. 

Ten minutes later Mr. Neal and Mr. West met in a pri- 
vate room at Berringer’s, having arrived thither by different 
routes. Over a table, the door shut against all-comers, Mr. 
Neal went at once to the point, apologizing diffidently for a 
“butting in” which Mr. West might resent, but which he, 
Mr. West’s friend, could no longer be restrained from. The 
Post , he continued, had been going along splendidly — 
“ better ’n under Cowles even — everybody says so — ” 
and then, to the sorrow and disappointment of the new ed- 
itor’s admirers, up had come this dashed old reformatory 
business and spoiled everything. 

West, whose thoughts had unconsciously run back to his 
last private talk with Plonny — the talk about getting in 
line — good-naturedly asked his friend if he was really lined 
up with the wire-pulling moss-backs who were fighting the 
reformatory bill. 

“You just watch me and see,” said Plonny, with humorous 
reproachfulness. “No charge f’r lookin’, and rain checks 
given in case of wet grounds.” 

“.Then for once in your life, anyhow, you’ve called the 
turn wrong, Plonny. This institution is absolutely necessary 
for the moral and social upbuilding of the State. It would 
be necessary if it cost five times one hundred thousand dol- 
lars, and it’s as sure to come as judgment day.” 

“Ain’t it funny!” mused Plonny. “Take a man like you, 
with fine high ideas and all, and let anything come up and 
pass itself off f’r a maw’l question and he’ll go off half-cocked 
ten times out of ten.” 

“Half-cocked!” laughed West. “We’ve been studying 
this question three years.” 

“Yes, and began your studies with your minds all made 
up.” 

Plonny fastened upon the young man a gaze in which 


QUEED 317 

superior wisdom struggled unsuccessfully with overwhelm- 
ing affection. “You know what it is, Mr. West? You’ve 
been took in. You ’ve bit on a con game like a hungry pike. 
Excuse my speaking so plain, but I told you a long time ago 
I was mightily interested in you.” 

“Speak as plain as you like, Plonny. In fact, my only re- 
quest at the moment is that you will speak plainer still. 
Who is it that has taken me in, and who is working this little 
con game you mention?” 

“Rev. George Dayne of the Charities,” said Plonny at 
once. “You mentioned wire-pulling just now. Lemme tell 
you that in the Rev. George you got the champeen wire- 
puller of the lot, the king politician of them all — the only 
one in this town, I do believe, could have thrown a bag as 
neat over your head, Mr. West.” 

“Why, Plonny! Much learning has made you mad! I 
know Dayne like a book, and he ’s as straightforward a fel- 
low as ever lived.” 

Mr. Neal let his eyes fall to the table-top and indulged in 
a slow smile, which he appeared to be struggling courteously, 
but without hope, to suppress. 

“O’ course you got a right to your opinion, Mr. West.” 

A brief silence ensued, during which a tiny imp of mem- 
ory whispered into West’s ear that Miss Weyland herself 
had commented on the Rev. Mr. Dayne’s marvelous gifts 
as a lobbyist. 

“ I ’m a older man than you,” resumed Neal, with precari- 
ous smilelessness, “and mebbe I’ve seen more of practi- 
cal poltix. It would be a strange thing, you might say, if at 
my time of life, I did n’t know a politician when I passed 
him in the road. Still, don’t you take my word for it. I ’m 
only repeating what others say when I tell you that Parson 
Dayne wants to be Governor of this State some day. That 
surprises you a little, hey? You was kind of thinking that 
‘Rev.’ changed the nature of a man, and that ambition 
never thought of keeping open f’r business under a high- 
cut vest, now was n’t you? Well, I ’ve seen funny things in 


318 QUEED 

my time. I’d say that the parson wants this reformatory 
some f’r the good of the State, and mostly f’r the good of 
Mr. Dayne. Give it to him, with the power of appointing 
employees — add this to what he ’s already got — and in 
a year he’ll have the prettiest little private machine ever 
you did see. I don’t ask you to believe me. All I ask is f’r 
you to stick a pin in what I say, and see ’f it don’t come true. ’ ’ 

West mused, impressed against his will. “You’re wrong, 
Plonny, in my opinion, and if you v/ere ten times right, what 
of it? You seem to think that the Post is advocating this 
reformatory because Dayne has asked for it. The Post is 
doing nothing of the sort. It is advocating the reformatory 
because it has studied this question to the bottom for itself, 
because it knows — ” 

“Right! Good f’r you!” exclaimed Mr. Neal, much 
gratified. “ That’s just what I tell the boys when they say 
you’re playin’ poltix with the little dominie. And that,” 
said he, briskly, “is just why I’m for the reformatory, in 
spite of Rev. Dayne’s little games.” 

“ You’re for it! You said just now that you were opposed 
to it.” 

“Not to the reformatory, Mr. West. Not at all. I’m 
only opposed to spending a hundred thousand dollars for it 
in a poverty year.” 

“Oh! You want the reformatory, but you don’t want it 
now. That’s where you stand, is it?” 

“Yes, and everybody else that understands just what the 
situation is. I believe in this reformatory — the Post con- 
verted me, that’s a fact — and if you’ll only let her stand 
two years, take my word for it, she’ll go through with a 
whoop. But if you ’re going to hurry the thing — ” 

“What’s your idea of hurry exactly? The war has been 
over forty years — ” 

“And look how splendid we’ve got along these forty years 
without the reformatory! Will you care to say, Mr. West, 
that we could n’t make it forty-two without bringing great 
danger to the State?” 


QUEED 319 

“No, certainly not. But the point is — ” 

“The point is that if we spend all this money now, the 
people will kick the party out at the next election. I would 
n’t admit this to many, ’cause I ’m ashamed of it, but it ’s 
gospel truth. Mr. West,” said Plonny, earnestly, “I know 
you want the Post to stand for the welfare of the party — ” 

“Certainly. And it has been my idea that evidence of 
sane interest in public morals was a pretty good card 
for—” 

“So it would be at any ordinary time. But it’s mighty 
different when the people from one end of the State to the 
other are howling economy and saying that all expenses 
must go to bed-rock or they ’ll know the reason why. There ’s 
the practical side of it — look at it f’r a minute. The legis- 
lature was elected by these people on a platform promising 
strictest economy. They’re tryin’ to carry out their promise 
faithfully. They turn down and postpone some mighty good 
plans to advance the progress of the State. They rejuice 
salaries in various departments” — (one was the exact 
number) — “heelers come up lookin’ f’r jobs, and they send 
’em away empty-handed and sore. Old-established institu- 
tions, that have been doin’ grand work upbuildin’ the State 
f’r years, are told that they must do with a half or three 
quarters of their appropriations f’r the next two years. 
You’ve seen all this happen, Mr. West?” 

West admitted that he had. 

“Well, now when everything is goin’ smooth and promisin’, 
you come along and tell ’em they got to shell out a hundred 
thousand dollars right away f’r a brand-new institution, with 
an annual appropriation to keep it up. Now s’pose they do 
what you tell ’em. What happens? You think there’s no 
poltix at all in this reformatory business, but I can tell you 
the Republicans won’t take such a view as that. They’ll 
say that the party spent a hundred thousand dollars of the 
people’s money in a hard times year, just to make a few more 
jobs f’r favorites. They’ll throw that up at us from every 
stump in the State. And when our leaders explain that it was 


320 QUEED 

done for the maw’l good of the State, they ’ll give us the laugh 
— same as they did when we established the Foundling 
Hospital in '98. Now I tell you the party can’t stand any 
talk of that kind this year. We ’re on shaky ground right now 
f ’r the same reason that we ’re all so proud of — spendin’ 
money f’r the maw’l uplift of the State. We either got to 
slow up f’r awhile or take a licking. That ’s what all the 
talk comes down to — one simple question: Will we hold 
off this big expense f’r just two years, or will we send the 
old party down to defeat?” 

West laughed, not quite comfortably. 

In all this dialogue, Mr. Neal had over him the enormous 
advantage of exact and superior knowledge. To tell the 
truth, West knew very little about the reformatory situation, 
and considered it, among the dozens of matters in which he 
was interested, rather a small issue. Having turned the cam- 
paign over to his assistant, he had dismissed it from his mind ; 
and beyond his general conviction that the reformatory 
would be a good thing for the State, he had only the sketchi- 
est acquaintance with the arguments that were being used 
pro and con. Therefore Plonny Neal’s passionate earnest- 
ness surprised him, and Plonny’s reasoning, which he knew 
to be the reasoning of the thoroughly informed State lead- 
ers, impressed him very decidedly. Of the boss’s sincerity 
he never entertained a doubt; to question that candid eye 
was impossible. That Plonny had long been watching him 
with interest and admiration, West knew very well. It began 
to look to him very much as though Queed, through excess 
of sociological zeal, had allowed himself to be misled, and 
that the paper’s advanced position was founded on theory 
without reference to existing practical conditions. 

West keenly felt the responsibility of his post. To safe- 
guard and promote the welfare of the Democratic party had 
long been a cardinal principle of the paper whose utterances 
he now controlled. Still, it must be true that Neal was paint- 
ing the situation in colors altogether too black. 

"You’re a pretty good stump performer yourself, Plonny. 


QUEED 321 

Don’t you know that exactly the same argument will be 
urged two years from now?” 

“I knowit won’t,” said Plonnywith the calmness of abso- 
lute conviction. “A fat legislature always follows a lean one. 
They come in strips, same as a shoulder of bacon.” 

“Well ! I would n’t think much of a party whose legs were 
so weak that a little step forward — everybody knows it’s 
forward — would tumble it over in a heap.” 

“The party! I ain’t thinking of the party , Mr. West. I ’m 
thinking,” said Neal, the indignation in his voice giving way 
to a sudden apologetic softness, “of you.” 

“Me? What on earth have I got to do with it?” asked 
West, rather touched by the look of dog-like affection in the 
other’s eyes. 

“Everything. If the party gets let in for this extrava- 
gance, you’il be the man who did it.” 

There was a silence, and then West said, rather nobly: 

“Well, I suppose I will have to stand that. I must do 
what I think is right, you know, and take the consequences.” 

“Two years from now,” said Mr. Neal, gently, “there 
wouldn’t be no consequences.” 

“Possibly not,” said West, in a firm voice. 

“While the consequences now,” continued Mr. Neal, still 
more gently, “would be to put you in very bad with the 
party leaders. Fine men they are, but they never forgive a 
man who puts a crimp into the party. You’d be a marked 
man to the longest day you lived!” 

“Well, Plonny! I’m not asking anything of the party 
leaders — ” 

“But suppose some of your friends wanted to ask some- 
thing/or you?” 

Suddenly Plonny leaned over the table, and began speak- 
ing rapidly and earnestly. 

“Listen here, Mr. West. I understand your feelings and 
your position just like they was print, and I was reading them 
over your shoulder. You’re walking with y’r eyes on the 
skies, and you don’t like to look at the ground to see that 


322 , QUEED 

you don’t break nothing as you go forward. Your mind’s full 
of the maw’l idea and desire to uplift the people, and it ’s kind 
of painful to you to stop and look at the plain practical way 
by which things get done. But I tell you that everybody 
who ever got anything big done in this world, got it done in a 
practical way. All the big men that you and I admire — all 
the public leaders and governors and reform mayors and so 
on — got where they have by doing practical good in a prac- 
tical way. Now, you don’t like me to say that if you do so- 
and-so, you ’ll be in bad with the State leaders, f ’r that looks 
to you as if I thought you could be infloonced by what would 
be your personal advantage. And I honor you f’r them feel- 
in’s which is just what I knew you’d have, or I would n’t 
be here talkin’ to you now. But you mustn’t blame others 
if they ain’t as partic’lar, mebbe, as to how things might look. 
You mustn’t blame y’r friends — and you’ve got a sight 
more of them than you have any idea of — if they feel all 
broke up to see you get in bad, both for your own sake and 
f’r the sake of the party.” 

Plonny’s voice trembled with earnestness; West had had 
no idea that the man admired him so much. 

“You want to serve the people, Mr. West? How could 
you do it better than in public orf’ce. Lemme talk to 
you straight f’r once — will you? Or am I only offendin’ 
you by buttin’ in this way, without having ever been 
asked?” 

West gave his admirer the needed assurance. 

“I’m glad of it' f’r I can hardly keep it in my system any 
longer. Listen here, Mr. West. As you may have heard, 
there’s to be a primary f’r city orf’cers in June. Secret bal- 
lot or no secret ballot, the organization ’s going to win. You 
know that. Now, who ’ll the organization put up f’r Mayor? 
From what I hear, they dassen’t put up any old machine 
hack, same ’s they been doin’ f’r years. They might want to 
do it, but they ’re a-scared the people won’t stand f’r it. From 
what little I hear, the feelin’s strong that they got to put up 
some young progressive public-spirited man of the reformer 


QUEED 323 

type. Now s’posin’ the friends of a certain fine young man, 
siftin' not a hundred miles from this table, had it in their 
minds to bring him forward f ’r the nomination. This young 
man might say he was n’t seekin’ the orf’ce and did n’t 
want it, but I say public orf’ce is a duty, and no man that 
wants to serve the people can refuse it, partic’larly when he 
may be needed to save the party. And now I ask you this, 
Mr. West: What show would the friends of this young man 
have, if he had a bad spot on his record? What chance ’d 
there be of namin’ to lead the party in the city the man who 
had knifed the party in the State?" 

West’s chin rested upon his hand; his gaze fell dreamily 
upon the table-top. Before his mind’s eye there had un- 
rolled a favorite vision — a white meadow of faces focussed 
breathlessly upon a great orator. He recalled himself with 
a start, a stretch, and a laugh. 

“Are n’t you wandering rather carelessly into the future, 
Plonny?” 

“If I am,’’ said Mr. Neal, solemnly, “it’s because you 
stand at the crossroads to-day.” 

West found the office deserted, his assistant being gone 
for lunch. He finished two short articles begun earlier in the 
day, and himself departed with an eye to food. Later, he 
had to attend a couple of board meetings, which ran off into 
protracted by-talk, and the rainy twilight had fallen be- 
fore his office knew him again. 

Not long after, Queed, already hatted and overcoated to 
go, pushed open the connecting door and entered. The two 
chatted a moment of the make-up of next day’s “page.” 
Presently West said: “By the bye, written anything about 
the reformatory?” 

“Anything!” echoed Queed, with a faint smile. “You 
might say that I ’ve written everything about it — the best 
article I ever wrote, I should say. It’s our last chance, you 
know.” 

Queed thought of Eva Bernheimer, and a light crept into 


324 QUEED 

his ordinarily impassive eye. At the same time, West’s or- 
dinarily buoyant face fell a little. 

“That so? Let me see how you’ve handled it, will you?” 

“Certainly,” said Queed, showing no surprise, though it 
was many a day since any composition of his had under- 
gone supervision in that office. 

It was on the tip of West’s tongue to add, “ I rather think 
we’ve been pressing that matter too hard,” but he checked 
himself. Why should he make any explanation to his assist- 
ant? Was it not the fact that he had trusted the young man 
too far already? 

Queed brought his article and laid it on West’s desk, his 
face very thoughtful now. “If there is any information I can 
give you about the subject, I ’ll wait.” 

West hardly repressed a smile. “Thank you, I think I 
understand the situation pretty well.” 

Still Queed lingered and hesitated, most unlike himself. 
Presently he strolled over to the window and looked down 
unseeingly into the lamplit wetness of Centre Street. In fact, 
he was the poorest actor in the world, and never pretended 
anything, actively or passively, without being unhappy. 

“ It’s raining like the mischief,” he offered uncomfortably. 

“Cats and dogs,” said West, his fingers twiddling with 
Queed ’s copy. 

“ By the way,” said Queed, turning with a poorly done air 
of casualness, “what is commonly supposed to have become 
of Henry G. Surface? Do people generally believe that he is 
dead?” 

“ Bless your heart, no ! ” said West, looking up in some sur- 
prise at the question. “That kind never die. They invari- 
ably live to a green old age — green like the bay- tree.” 

“I — have gotten very much interested in his story,” 
said Queed, which was certainly true enough. “Where do 
people think that he is now?” 

“Oh, in the West somewhere, living like a fat hog off Miss 
Weyland’s money.” 

Queed ’s heart lost a beat. An instinct, swift as a reflex, 


OUEED 325 

turned him to the window again ; he feared that his face might 
commit treason. A curious contraction and hardening 
seemed to be going on inside of him, a chilling petrifaction, 
and this sensation remained ; but in the next instant he felt 
himself under perfect control, and was calmly saying: — 

“Why, I thought the courts took all the money he had.” 

“They took all they could find. If you’ve studied high 
finance you’ll appreciate the distinction.” Amiably West 
tapped the table-top with the long point of his pencil, and 
wished that Queed would restore him his privacy. “Every- 
body thought at the time, you know, that he had a hundred 
thousand or so put away where the courts never got hold 
of it. The general impression was that he’d somehow smug- 
gled it over to the woman he ’d been living with — his wife, 
he said. She died, I believe, but probably our friend Sur- 
face, when he got out, had n’t the slightest trouble in putting 
his hands on the money.” 

“No, I suppose not. An interesting story, is n’t it? You ’ll 
telephone if you need anything to-night?” 

“Oh, I shan’t need anything. The page is shaping up very 
satisfactorily, I think. Good-night, my dear fellow.” 

Left alone, West picked up Queed ’s closely-written sheets, 
and leaning back in his chair read them with the closest at- 
tention. Involuntarily, his intellect paid a tribute to the 
writer as he read. The article was masterly. The argument 
was close and swift, the language impassioned, the style 
piquant. “Where did he learn to write like that ! ” wondered 
West. Here was the whole subject compressed into half a 
column, and so luminous a half column that the dullest could 
not fail to understand and admire. Two sarcastic little 
paragraphs were devoted to stripping the tatters from the 
nakedness of the economy argument, and these Mr. Queed ’s 
chief perused twice. 

“The talk of a doctrinaire,” mused he presently. “The 
closet philosopher’s ideas. How far afield from the real situ- 
ation. ...” 

It was a most fortunate thing, he reflected, that he him- 


326 QUEED 

self had means of getting exact and accurate information at 
first hand. Suppose that he had not, that, like some editors, 
he had simply passed this article in without examination and 
correction. It would have made the Post ridiculous, and de- 
cidedly impaired its reputation for common sense and fair 
play. Whatever should or should not be said, this was cer- 
tainly no way to talk of honest men, who were trying to 
conserve the party and who differed from the Post only on 
an unimportant question of detail. 

West leaned back in his chair and stared at the farther 
wall. . . . For that was exactly what it was — an unimport- 
ant detail. The important thing, the one thing that he him- 
self had insisted on, was that the State should have a reform- 
atory. Whether the State had it now or two years from now, 
made relatively little difference, except to those who, like his 
editorial assistant, had sunk themselves in the question till 
their sense of proportion had deserted them. Was not that 
a fair statement of the case? Whatever he did, he must not 
let his views be colored by probable effects upon his own fu- 
ture. . . . Surely, to wait two brief years for the institu-j 
tion, with the positive assurance of it then, could be no hard- 
ship to a State which had got along very well without it for 
all the years of its lifetime. Surely not. Plonny Neal, whose 
sharp horse sense he would back against any man in the 
State, was absolutely sound there. 

He tried to consider the question with chill judicially, 
and believed that he was doing so. But the fervor which 
Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for 
Plonny’s knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, 
unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least re- 
sistance. . . . Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the 
party was facing a great crisis ; and it was in his hand to save 
or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the Post , which 
wielded the decisive power. The people had risen with the 
unreasonable demand that progress be checked for a time, 
because of the cost of it. The leaders had responded to the 
best of their ability, but necessary expenses were so great 


QUEED 327 

that it was going to be a narrow shave at best — so narrow 
that another hundred thousand spent would land the whole 
kettle of fish in the fire. The grand old party would go 
crashing down the precipice. Was not that a criminal price 
to pay for getting a reformatory institution two years be- 
fore the people were ready to pay for it? There was the 
whole question in a nutshell. 

The one unpleasant aspect of this view was Sharlee Wey- 
land, the dearest girl in the world. She would be much dis- 
appointed, and, for the first moment, would possibly be 
somewhat piqued with him personally. He knew that women 
were extremely unreasonable about these things; they 
looked at affairs from the emotional point of view, from the 
point of view of the loose, large “effect.” But Sharlee Wey- 
land was highly intelligent and sensible, and he had not the 
smallest doubt of his ability to make her understand what 
the unfortunate situation was. He could not tell her every- 
thing — Plonnyhad cautioned secrecy about the real gravity 
of the crisis — but he would tell her enough to show her how 
he had acted, with keen regrets, from his sternest sense of 
public duty. It was a cruel stroke of fate’s that his must be 
the hand to bring disappointment to the girl he loved, but 
after all, would she not be the first to say that he must never 
put his regard for her preferences above the larger good of 
City and State? He could not love her, dear, so well, loved 
he not honor more. 

He picked up Queed’s article and glanced again at the 
astonishing words, words which, invested with the Post's 
enormous prestige, simply kicked and cuffed the party to 
its ruin. A wave of resentment against his assistant swept 
through the editor’s mind. This was what came of trusting 
anything to anybody else. If you wanted to be sure that 
things were done right, do them yourself. Because he had 
allowed Queed a little rope, that young man had industri- 
ously gathered in almost enough to hang, not himself, for he 
was nothing, but the Post and its editor. However, there was 
no use crying over spilt milk. What was done wa9 done. For- 


338 QUEED 

tunately, the Post's general position was sound ; had not the 
editor himself dictated it? If the expression of that position 
in cold type had been gradually carried by a subordinate to 
a more and more violent extreme, to an intemperance of 
utterance which closely approached insanity, what was it 
the editor’s duty to do? Obviously to take charge himself 
and swing the position back to a safe and sane mean, exactly 
where he had placed it to begin with. That was all that was 
asked of him — to shift back the paper’s position to where 
he had placed it in the beginning, and by so doing to save 
the party from wreck. Could a sensible man hesitate an 
instant? And in return. . . . 

West’s gaze wandered out of the window, and far on into 
the beyond. . . . His friends were watching him, silently 
but fearfully. Who and what these friends were his swift 
thought did not stay to ask. His glamorous fancy saw them 
as a great anxious throng, dominant men, yet respectful, 
who were trembling lest he should make a fatal step — to 
answer for it with his political life. Public life — he rejected 
the term political life — was of all things what he was pre- 
eminently fitted for. How else could a man so fully serve 
his fellows? — how so surely and strongly promote the up- 
lift? And Plonny Neal had served notice on him that he 
stood to-day on the crossroads to large public usefulness. 
The czar of them all, the great Warwick who made and 
unmade kings by the lifting of his finger, had told him, as 
plain as language could speak, that he, West, was his imperial 
choice for the mayoralty, with all that that foreshadowed. 

. . . Truly, he had served his apprenticeship, and was meet 
for his opportunity. For eight long months he had stood 
in line, doing his duty quietly and well, asking no favor of 
anybody. And now at last Warwick had beckoned him and 
set the mystic star upon his forehead. . . . 

Iridescent visionry enwrapped the young man, and he 
swam in it goldenly. In time his spirit returned to his body, 
and he found himself leaning back in a very matter-of-fact 
chair, facing a very plain question. How could the shift- 


QUEED 329 

ing back, the rationalizing, of the paper’s position be accom- 
plished with the minimum of shock? How could he rescue 
the party with the least possible damage to the Post's con- 
sistency? 

West went to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, 
pulled out a large folder marked, Reformatory , and, return- 
ing to his seat, ran hurriedly through the Post's editorials on 
this subject during the past twelvemonth. Over some of the 
phrases he ground his teeth. They floated irritatingly in his 
head as he once more leaned back in his chair and frowned 
at the opposite wall. 

Gradually there took form in his mind a line of reasoning 
which would appear to grow with some degree of naturalness 
out of what had gone before, harmonizing the basic continu- 
ity of the Post's attitude, and minimizing the change in pre- 
sent angle or point of view. His fertile mind played about 
it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and perfecting; 
and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon with 
fluent ease. 


XXVI 

In which Queed forces the Old Professor's Hand, and the Old 
Professor takes to his Bed. 

R AINCOAT buttoned to his throat, Queed set his face 
against the steady downpour. It was a mild, windless 
night near the end of February, foreshadowing the 
early spring already nearly due. He had no umbrella, or wish 
for one: the cool rain in his face was a refreshment and a 
vivifier. 

So the worst had come to the worst, and he had been liv- 
ing for nearly a year on Sharlee Weyland’s money, stolen 
from her by her father’s false friend. Wormwood and gall 
were the fruits that altruism had borne him. Two casual 
questions had brought out the shameful truth, and these 
questions could have been asked as easily a year ago as now. 

Bitterly did the young man reproach himself now, for his 
criminal carelessness in regard to the sources of Surface’s 
luxurious income. For the better part of a year he had known 
the old man for an ex-convict whose embezzlings had run 
high into six figures. Yet he had gone on fatuously swallow- 
ing the story that the money of which the old rogue was so 
free represented nothing but the savings of a thrifty school- 
teacher. A dozen things came back to him now to give the 
lie to that tale. He thought of the costly books that Surface 
was constantly buying; the expensive repairs he had made 
in his rented house ; the wine that stood on the dinner- table 
every night; the casual statement from the old man that he 
meant to retire from the school at the end of the present 
session. Was there ever a teacher who could live like this 
after a dozen years’ roving work? And the probability was 
that Surface had never worked at all until, returning to his 
own city, he had needed a position as a cover and a blind. 


QUEED 331 

Mathematical computations danced through the young 
man’s brain. He figured that their present scale of living 
must run anywhere from $3500 to $5000 a year. Surface’s 
income from the school was known to be $900 a year. His 
income from his lodger was $390 a year. This difference be- 
tween, say $4000 and $1290, was $2710 a year, or 4 per cent 
on some $70,000: And this tidy sum was being filched from 
the purse of Charlotte Lee Weyland, who worked for her liv- 
ing at an honorarium of $75 a month. 

Queed walked with his head lowered, bent less against the 
rain than his own stinging thoughts. At the corner of Seventh 
Street a knot of young men, waiting under a dripping awn- 
ing for a car that would not come, cried out gayly to the Doc; 
they were Mercuries; but the Doc failed to respond to their 
greetings, or even to hear them. He crossed the humming 
street, northerly, with an experienced sureness acquired since 
his exploit with the dog Behemoth ; and so came into his own 
section of the town. 

He was an apostle of law who of all things loved harmony. 
Already his mind was busily at work seeking to restore order 
out of the ruins of his house. Obviously the first thing to do, 
the one thing that could not wait an hour, was to get his 
sense of honesty somehow back again. He must compel 
Surface to hand over to Miss Weyland immediately every 
cent of money that he had. The delivery could be arranged 
easily enough, without any sensational revelations. The let- 
ter to Miss Weyland could come from a lawyer in the West; 
in Australia, if the old man liked ; that did n’t matter. The 
one thing that did matter was that he should immediately 
make restitution as fully as lay within the power of them 
both. 

Surface, of course, would desperately resist such a sug- 
gestion. Queed knew of but one club which could drive him 
to agree to it, one goad which could rowel him to the height. 
This was his own continued companionship. He could com- 
pel Surface to disgorgement only at the price of a new offer- 
ing of himself to the odious old man who had played false 


33 2 QUEED 

with him as with everybody else. Queed did not hesitater 
At the moment every cost seemed small to clear his dearest 
belonging, which was his personal honesty, of this stain. 
As for Surface, nothing could make him more detestable in 
a moral sense than he had been all along. He had been a thief 
and a liar from the beginning. Once the cleansing storm was 
over, their unhappy domestic union could go on much as it 
had done before. 

For his part, he must at once set about restoring his half 
of the joint living expenses consumed during the past nine 
months. This money could be passed in through the lawyer 
with the rest, so that she would never know. Obviously, he 
would have to make more money than he was making now, 
which meant that he would have to take still more time from 
his book. There were his original tax articles in the Post , 
which a publisher had asked him at the time to work over 
into a primer for college use. There might be a few hundreds 
to be made there. He could certainly place some articles 
in the reviews. If for the next twelve months he ruthlessly 
eliminated everything from his life that did not bring in 
money, he could perhaps push his earnings for the next year 
to three thousand dollars, which would be enough to see him 
through. . . . 

And busy with thoughts like these, he came home to Sur- 
face’s pleasant little house, and was greeted by the old man 
with kindness and good cheer. 

It was dinner-time — for they dined at night now, in 
some state — and they sat down to four dainty courses, 
cooked and served by the capable Henderson. The table 
was a round one, so small that the two men could have 
shaken hands across it without the smallest exertion. By 
old Surface’s plate stood a gold-topped bottle, containing, 
not the ruddy burgundy which had become customary of 
late, but sparkling champagne. Surface referred to it, grace- 
fully, as his medicine; doctors, he said, were apparently un- 
der the delusion that schoolmasters had bottomless purses. 
To this pleasantry Queed made no reply. He was, indeed, 


QUEED 333 

spare with his remarks that evening, and his want of appe- 
tite grieved old Henderson sorely. 

The servant brought the coffee and retired. He would not 
be back again till he was rung for: that was the iron rule. 
The kitchen was separated from the dining-room by a pantry 
and two doors. Thus the diners were as private as they were 
ever likely to be in this world, and in the breast of one of 
them was something that would brook no more delay. 

“ Professor,” said this one, with a face which gave no sign 
of inner turmoil, “I find myself obliged to refer once more 
to — an unwelcome subject.” 

Surface was reaching for his coffee cup; he was destined 
never to pick it up. His hand fell; found the edge of the 
table ; his long fingers gripped and closed over it. 

“Ah?” he said easily, not pretending to doubt what sub- 
ject was meant. “I’m sorry. I thought that we had laid the 
old ghosts for good.” 

“I thought so, too. I was mistaken, it seems.” 

Across the table, the two men looked at each other. To 
Surface, the subject must indeed have been the most un- 
welcome imaginable, especially when forced upon him with 
so ominous a directness. Yet his manner was the usual bland 
mask; his face, rather like a bad Roman senator’s in the 
days of the decline, had undergone no perceptible change. 

“When I came here to live with you,” said Queed, “I 
understood, of course, that you would be contributing sev- 
eral times as much toward our joint expenses as I. To a cer- 
tain degree, you would be supporting me. Naturally, I did 
not altogether like that. But you constantly assured me, you 
may remember, that you would rather put your savings into 
a home than anything else, that you could not manage it 
without my assistance, and that you considered my com- 
panionship as fully offsetting the difference in the money we 
paid. So I became satisfied that the arrangement was honor- 
able to us both.” 

Surface spoke with fine courtesy. “All this is so true, 
your contribution toward making our house a home has 


334 QUEED 

been so much greater than my own, that I feel certain nothing 
can have happened to disturb your satisfaction.” 

“Yes,” said Queed. “ I have assumed all the time that the 
money you were spending here was your own.” 

There was a silence. Queed looked at the table-cloth. He 
had just become aware that his task was hateful to him. The 
one thing to do was to get it over as swiftly and decisively 
as possible. 

“I am at a loss,” said the old man, dryly, “to understand 
where the assumption comes in, in view of the fact that I 
have stated, more than once — ” 

“I am forced to tell you that I cannot accept these state- 
ments.” 

For a moment the brilliant eyes looked dangerous. “Are 
you aware that your language is exceedingly offensive?” 

“Yes. I ’m very sorry. Nevertheless, this tooth must come 
out. It has suddenly become apparent to me that you must 
be spending here the income on hardly less than seventy- 
five thousand dollars. Do you seriously ask me to believe, 
now that I directly bring up the matter, that you amassed 
this by a few years of school-teaching?” 

Surface lit a cigarette, and, taking a slow puff, looked un- 
winkingly into the young man’s eyes, which looked as stead- 
ily back into his own. “You are mistaken in assuming,” 
he said sternly, “that, in giving you my affection, I have 
given you any right to cross-examine me in — ” 

“Yes, you gave it to me when you invited me to your 
house as, in part, your guest — ” 

“I am behind the times, indeed, if it is esteemed the 
privilege of a guest to spy upon his host.” 

“That,” said Queed, quietly, “is altogether unjust. You 
must know that I am not capable of spying on you. I have, 
on the contrary, been culpably short-sighted. Never once 
have I doubted anything you told me until you yourself 
insisted on rubbing doubts repeatedly into my eyes. Pro- 
fessor,” he went on rapidly, “are you aware that those 
familiar with your story say that, when you — that, after 


OUEED 335 

your misfortune, you started life again with a bank account 
of between one and two hundred thousand dollars?” 

# The bIack eyes lit up like two shoe-buttons in the sun- 
light. “That is a wicked falsehood, invented at the time by 
a lying reporter — ” 

“Do you assert that everything you have now has been 
earned since your misfortune?” 

“Precisely that.” 

The voice was indignantly firm, but Queed, looking into 
the old man’s face, read there as plain as day that he was 
lying. 

“Think a moment,” he said sorrowfully. “This is pretty 
serious, you see. Are you absolutely sure that you carried 
over nothing at all?” 

“ In the sight of God, I did not. But let me tell you, my 
friend — ” 

A chair-leg scraped on the carpeted floor, and Queed was 
standing, playing his trump card with a grim face. 

“We must say good-by, Professor — now. I’ll send for 
my things in the morning.” 

“What do you mean, you — ” 

“That you and I part company to-night. Good-by.” 

“Stop ! ” cried Surface. He rose, greatly excited and leaned 
over the table. A faint flush drove the yellow from his cheek; 
his eyes were blazing. He shook a menacing finger at close 
range in Queed ’s face, which remained entirely unmoved by 
the demonstration. 

“So this is the reward of my kindness and affection! I 
won’t endure it, do you understand ? I won’t be kicked into 
the gutter like an old shoe, do you hear? Sit down in that 
chair. I forbid you to leave the house.” 

Queed’s gaze was more formidable than his own. “Mr. 
Surface,” he said, in a peculiarly quiet voice, “you forget 
yourself strangely. You are in no position to speak to me 
like this.” 

Surface appeared suddenly to agree with him. He fell 
back into his chair and dropped his face into his hands. 


336 QUEED 

Queed, standing where he was, watched him across the 
tiny dinner-table and, against his reason, felt very sorry. 
How humiliating this ripping up of old dishonor was to the 
proud old man, rogue though he was, he understood well 
enough. From nobody in the world but him, he knew, would 
Surface ever have suffered it to proceed as far as this, and 
this knowledge made him want to handle the knife with as 
little roughness as possible. 

“I — was wrong,” said the muffled voice. “I ask your 
forgiveness for my outbreak.” 

“You have it.” 

Surface straightened himself up, and, by an obvious effort, 
managed to recapture something like his usual smoothness 
of voice and manner. 

“Will you be good enough to sit down? I will tell you what 
you wish.” 

“Certainly. Thank you.” 

Queed resumed his seat. His face was a little pale, but 
otherwise just as usual. Inwardly, after the moment of crit- 
ical uncertainty, he was shaken by a tempest of fierce exulta- 
tion. His club, after all, was going to be strong enough; the 
old man would give up the money rather than give up him. 

Surface picked up his cigarette. All his storm signals had 
disappeared as by magic. 

“I did manage,” began the old man, flicking off his ash 
with an admirable effect of calm, “to save a small nest-egg 
from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old 
age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack 
of acquaintance with business methods, the details would 
only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another 
reason for wishing to keep it a surprise. You have forced 
me, against my preferences, to tell you. As to this small 
pittance,” he said, without the flicker of an eye-lash, “any 
court in the country would tell you that it is fairly and 
honorably mine.” 

“Thank you. I appreciate your telling me this.” Queed 
leaned over the table, and began speaking in a quiet, brisk 


OUEED 337 

voice. “ Now, then, here is the situation. You have a certain 
sum of money put away somewhere, estimated to be not less 
than a hundred thousand dollars — ” 

“Nothing of the sort! Far less than that! A few beggarly 
thousands, which — ” 

“Very well — a few thousands. Of course your books will 
readily show the exact figures. This money was withheld 
at the time your affairs were settled, and therefore was not 
applied to reducing the — the loss on the trustee account. 
Of course, if its existence had been known, it would have 
been so applied. In other words, the Weyland estate has 
been deprived to the exact extent of the sum withheld. 
Fortunately, it is never too late to correct an error of this 
sort. My idea is that we should make the restitution with- 
out the loss of an unnecessary day.” 

Doubtless the old man had seen it coming; he heard the 
galling proposal with a face which showed nothing stronger 
than profound surprise. “Restitution! My dear boy, I 
owe no restitution to any one.” 

“You hardly take the position that you have acquired a 
title to the Weyland trustee funds?” 

“Ah, there it is!” purred Surface, making a melancholy 
gesture. “You see why I did not wish to open up this com- 
plicated subject. Your ignorance, if you will pardon me, of 
modern business procedure, makes it very difficult for you 
to grasp the matter in its proper bearings. Without going 
into too much detail, let me try to explain it to you. This 
settlement of my affairs that you speak of was forcibly done 
by the courts, in the interest of others, and to my great injury. 
The rascals set out to cut my throat — was it required of 
me to whet the knife for them? They set out to strip me of 
the last penny I had, and they had every advantage, despotic 
powers, with complete access to all my private papers. If 
the robbers overlooked something that I had, a bagatelle I 
needed for the days of my adversity, was it my business to 
pluck them by the sleeve and turn traitor to myself? Why, 
the law itself gave me what they passed over. I was declared 


338 OUEED 

a bankrupt. Don’t you know what that means? It means 
that the courts assumed responsibility for my affairs, paid 
off my creditors, and, as a small compensation for having 
robbed me, wiped the slate clean and declared me free 
of all claims. And this was twenty-five years ago. My 
dear boy ! Read the Bankruptcy Act. Ask a lawyer, any 
lawyer — ” 

“Let us not speak of lawyers — now,” interrupted Queed, 
stirring in his chair. “Let their opinion wait as a last alter- 
native, which, I earnestly hope, need never be used at all. 
I am not bringing up this point to you now as a legal ques- 
tion, but as a moral one.” 

“Ah! You do not find that the morals provided by the 
law are good enough for you, then?” 

“If your reading of the law is correct — of which I am 
not so certain as you are, I fear — it appears that they are 
tot. But — ” 

“It is my misfortune,” interrupted the old man, his hand 
tightening on the table-edge, “that your sympathies are not 
with me in the matter. Mistaken sentiment, youthful 
Quixotism, lead you to take an absurdly distorted view of 
what — ” 

“No, I’m afraid not. You see, when stripped of all un- 
necessary language, the repulsive fact is just this: we are 
living here on money that was unlawfully abstracted from 
the Weyland estate. No matter what the law may say, we 
know that this money morally belongs to its original owners. 
Now I ask you — ” 

“Let me put it another way. I can show you exactly 
where your misapprehension is — ” 

Queed stopped him short by a gesture. “My mind is so 
clear on this point that discussion only wastes our time.” 

The young man’s burst of exultation was all but still- 
born; already despair plucked chilly at his heart-strings. 
For the first time the depth of his feeling broke through into 
his voice: “Say, if you like that I am unreasonable, ignorant, 
unfair. Put it all down to besotted prejudice. . . . Can’t you 


QUEED 339 

restore this money because I ask it? Won’t you do it as a 
favor to me?” 

Surface’s face became agitated. “ I believe there is nothing 
else in the world — that I would n’t do for you — a thou- 
sand times over — but — ” 

Then Queed threw the last thing that he had to offer into 
the scales, namely himself. He leaned over the table and 
fixed the old man with imploring eyes. 

“ I ’d do my best to make it up to you. I’ll — I ’ll live 
with you till one or the other of us dies. You ’ll have some- 
body to take care of you when you are old, and there will' 
never be any talk of the poorhouse between you and me. It 
can all be arranged quietly through a lawyer, Professor — and 
nobody will guess your secret. You and I will find quiet 
lodgings somewhere, and live together — as friends — live 
cleanly, honorably, honestly — ” 

“For God’s sake, stop!” said Surface, in a broken voice. 
“This is more than I can bear.” 

So Queed knew that it was hopeless, and that the old man 
meant to cling to his dishonored money, and let his friend 
go. He sank back in his chair, sick at heart, and a painful 
silence fell. 

“If I refuse,” Surface took up the theme, “it is for your 
sake as well as mine. My boy, you don’t know what you 
ask. It is charity, mere mad charity to people whom I have 
no love for, who — ” 

“Then,” said Queed, “two things must happen. First, I 
must lay the facts before Miss Weyland.” 

Surface’s manner changed; his eyes became unpleasant. 
“You are not serious. You can hardly mean to repeat to 
anybody what I have told you in sacred confidence.” 

Queed smiled sadly. “No, you have not told me anything 
in confidence. You have never told me anything until I first 
found it out for myself, and then only because denial was 
useless.” 

“When I told you my story last June, you assured 

„ _ »> 
me — 


34<> QUEED 

“ However, you have just admitted that what you told me 
last June was not the truth.” 

Again their eyes clashed, and Surface, whose face was 
slowly losing all its color, even the sallowness, found no sign 
of yielding in those of the younger man. 

Queed resumed : 11 However, I do not mean that I shall tell 
her who you are, unless you yourself compel me to. I shall 
simply let her know that you are known to be alive, within 
reach of the courts, and in possession of a certain sum of 
money withheld from the trustee funds. This will enable 
her to take the matter up with her lawyers and, as I believe, 
bring it before the courts. If her claim is sustained, she would 
doubtless give you the opportunity to make restitution 
through intermediaries, and thus sensational disclosures 
might be avoided. However, I make you no promises about 
that.” 

Surface drew a breath ; he permitted his face to show signs 
of relief. “Since my argument and knowledge carry so little 
weight with you,” he said with a fine air of dignity, “I am 
willing to let the courts convince you, if you insist. But I 
do beg — ” 

Queed cut him short ; he felt that he could not bear one 
of the old man’s grandiloquent speeches now. “There is 
one other thing that must be mentioned,” he said in a tired 
voice. “You understand, of course, that I can live here no 
longer.” 

“My God! Don’t say that! Aren’t you satisfied with 
what you’ve done to me without that!” 

“I haven’t done anything to you. Whatever has been 
done, you have deliberately done to yourself. I have no de- 
sire to hurt or injure you. But — what are you thinking 
about, to imagine that I could continue to live here — on 
this money?” 

“You contradict yourself twice in the same breath! You 
ju6t said that you would let the courts settle that question — ” 

“As to the Weyland estate’s claim, yes. But I do not let 
the courts regulate my own sense of honor.” 


QUEED 34 1 

Surface, elbows on the table, buried his face in his hands. 
Queed slowly rose, a heart of lead in his breast. He had 
failed. He had offered all that he had, and it had been un- 
hesitatingly kicked aside. And, unless long litigation was 
started, and unless it ultimately succeeded, Henry G. Sur- 
face would keep his loot. 

He glanced about the pleasant little dining-room, symbol 
of the only home he had ever known, where, after all, he 
had done great work, and been not unhappy. Personally, he 
was glad to leave it, glad to stand out from the shadow of the 
ruin of Henry G. Surface. Nevertheless it was a real part- 
ing, the end of an epoch in his life, and there was sadness in 
that. Sadness, too, he saw, deeper than his repugnance and 
anger, in the bowed figure before him, the lost old man whom 
he was to leave solitary henceforward. Saddest of all was 
the consciousness of his own terrible failure. 

He began speaking in a controlled voice. 

“This interview is painful to us both. It is useless to pro- 
long it. I — have much to thank you for — kindness which 
I do not forget now and shall not forget. If you ever recon- 
sider your decision — if you should ever need me for any' 
thing — I shall be within call. And now I must leave you 
. . . sorrier than I can say that our parting must be like 
this.” He paused: his gaze rested on the bent head, and he 
offered, without hope, the final chance. “Your mind is quite 
made up? You are sure that — this — is the way you wish 
the matter settled?” 

Surface took his face from his hands and looked up. His 
expression was a complete surprise. It was neither savage 
nor anguished, but ingratiating, complacent, full of sup- 
pressed excitement. Into his eyes had sprung an indescrib- 
able look of cunning, the look of a broken-down diplomat 
about to outwit his adversary with a last unsuspected card. 

“No, no! Of course I’ll not let you leave me like this,” 
he said, with a kind of trembling eagerness, and gave a 
rather painful laugh. “You force my hand. I had not meant 
to tell you my secret so soon. You can’t guess the real reason 


342 QUEED 

why I refuse to give my money to Miss Weyland, even when 
you ask it, now can you? You can’t guess, now can you?” 

“ I think I can. You had rather have the money than have 

„ _ >> 

me. 

“Not a bit of it. Nothing of the kind ! Personally I care 
nothing for the money. I am keeping it,” said the old man, 
lowering his voice to a chuckling whisper, “for you /” He 
leaned over the table, fixing Queed with a gaze of triumphant 
cunning. “I’m going to make you my heir I Leave every- 
thing I have in the world to you l" 

A wave of sick disgust swept through the young man, 
momentarily engulfing his power of speech. Never had the 
old man’s face looked so loathsome to him, never the man 
himself appeared so utterly detestable. 

Surface had risen, whispering and chuckling. “ Come up to 
the sitting-room, my dear boy. I have some papers up there 
that may open your eyes. You need never work — ” 

“Stop!” said Queed, and the old man stopped in his 
tracks. “Can’t I make you understand?” he went on, 
fighting hard for calmness. “Isn’t it clear to you that 
nothing could induce me to touch another penny of this 
money?” 

“ Ah ! ” said Surface, in his softest voice. “ Ah ! And might 
I inquire the reason for this heroic self-restraint?” 

“You choose your words badly. It is no restraint to hon- 
est men to decline to take other people’s money.” 

“Ah, I see. I see. I see,” said Surface, nodding his shining 
hairless head up and down. 

“Good-by.” 

“No, no,” said the old man, in an odd thick voice. “Not 
quite yet, if you please. There is still something that I want 
to say to you.” 

He came slowly around the tiny table, and Queed watched 
his coming with bursts of fierce repugnance which set his 
hard-won muscles to twitching. An elemental satisfaction 
there might be in throwing the old man through the window. 
Yet, in a truer sense, he felt that the necessity of manhan- 


OUEED 343 

cUing him would be the final touch in this degrading inter- 
view. 

“You value your society too high, my dear boy,” said 
Surface with a face of chalk. “You want too big a price. 
I must fork over every penny I have, to a young trollop who 
happens to have caught your fancy — ” 

“Stand away from me!” cried Queed, with a face sud- 
denly whiter than his own. “You will tempt me to do what 
I shall be sorry for afterwards.” 

But Surface did not budge, and to strike, after all, was 
hardly possible; it would be no better than murder. The 
two men stood, white face to white face, the two pairs of 
fearless eyes scarcely a foot apart. And beyond all the ob- 
vious dissimilarity, there appeared a curious resemblance 
in the two faces at that moment: in each the same habit of 
unfaltering gaze, the same high forehead, the same clean-cut 
chin, the same straight, thin-lipped mouth. 

“Oh, I see through you clearly enough,” said Surface. 
“You’re in love with her! You think it is a pretty thing to 
sacrifice me to her, especially as the sacrifice costs you 
nothing — ” 

“Stop! Will you force me in the name of common de- 
cency — ” 

“ But I ’ll not permit you to do it, do you hear? ” continued 
Surface, his face ablaze, his lower lip trembling and twitch- 
ing, as it does, sometimes with the very old. “You need some 
discipline, my boy. Need some discipline — and you shall 
have it. You will continue to live with me exactly as you 
have heretofore, only henceforward I shall direct your move- 
ments and endeavor to improve your manners.” 

He swayed slightly where he stood, and Queed ’s tense- 
ness suddenly relaxed. Pity rose in his heart above furious 
resentment; he put out his hand and touched the old man’s 
arm. 

“Control yourself,” he said in an iron voice. “Come — 
I will help you to bed before I go.” 

Surface shook himself free, and laughed unpleasantly. 


344 QUEED 

“Go! Did n’t you hear me tell you that you were not going? 
Who do you think I am that you can flout and browbeat 
and threaten — ” 

“Come ! Let us go up to bed — ’’ 

“Who do you think I am!” repeated Surface, bringing his 
twitching face nearer, his voice breaking to sudden shrillness. 
“Who do you think I am, I say?” 

Queed thought the old man had gone off his head, and 
indeed he looked it. He began soothingly:. “You are — ” 

“I’m your father! Your father, do you hear!” cried Sur- 
face. “ You ’ re my son — Henry G. Surface , Jr. I" 

This time, Queed, looking with a wild sudden terror into 
the flaming eyes, knew that he heard the truth from Surface 
at last. The revelation broke upon him in a stunning flash. 
He sprang away from the old man with a movement of loath- 
ing unspeakable. 

“Father!” he said, in a dull curious whisper. “0 Godl 
Father I” 

Surface gazed at him, his upper lip drawn up into his old 
purring sneer. 

“So that is how you feel about it, my son?” he inquired 
suavely, and suddenly crumpled down upon the floor. 

The young man shook him by the shoulder, but he did 
not stir. Henderson came running at the sound of the fall, 
and together they bore the old man, breathing, but inert as 
the dead, to his room. In an hour, the doctor had come and 
gone. In two hours, a trained nurse was sitting by the bed as 
though she had been there always. The doctor called it a 
“stroke,” superinduced by a “shock/’ He said that Profes- 
sor Nicolovius might live for a week, or a year, but was 
hardly likely to speak again on this side the dark river that 
runs round the world. 


XXVII 


Sharlee Weyland reads the Morning Post; of Rev . Mr. Dayne's 
Fight at Ephesus and the Telephone Message that never 
came; of the Editor's Comment upon the Assistant Editor's 
Resignation , which perhaps lacked Clarity; and of how Eight 
Men elect a Mayor. 



EXT morning, in the first moment she had, Sharlee 


Weyland read the Post's editorial on the reforma- 


tory. And as she read she felt as though the skies 
had fallen, and the friendly earth suddenly risen up and 
smitten her. 

It was a rainy morning, the steady downpour of the night 
before turned into a fine drizzle; and Sharlee, who nearly 
always walked, took the car downtown. She was late this 
morning; there had been but flying minutes she could give 
to breakfast ; not a second to give to anything else ; and there- 
fore she took the Post with her to read on the ride to “the” 
office. And, seating herself, she turned immediately to the 
editorial page, in which the State Department of Charities 
felt an especial interest this morning. 

Both the name and the position of the editorial were im- 
mediateJy disappointing to her. It was not in the leading 
place, and its caption was simply “As to the Reformatory,” 
which seemed to her too colorless and weak. Subconsciously, 
she passed the same judgment upon the opening sentences 
of the text, which somehow failed to ring out that challenge 
to the obstructionists she had confidently expected. As she 
read further, her vague disappointment gave way to a sudden 
breathless incredulity; that to a heartsick rigidity of atten- 
tion ; and when she went back, and began to read the whole 
article over, slowly and carefully, from the beginning, her face 
was about the color of the pretty white collar she wore. 


346 QUEED 

For what she was looking on at was, so it seemed to her, not 
simply the killing of the chief ambition of her two years* 
work, but the treacherous murder of it in the house of its 
friends. 

As she reread “As to the Reformatory,” she became im- 
pressed by its audacious cleverness. It would have been im- 
possible to manage a tremendous shift in position with more 
consummate dexterity. Indeed, she was almost ready to 
take the Post's word for it that no shift at all had been made. 
From beginning to end the paper’s unshakable loyalty to 
the reformatory was everywhere insisted upon ; that was the 
strong keynote ; the ruinous qualifications were slipped in, as 
it were, reluctantly, hard-wrung concessions to indisputable 
and overwhelming evidence. But there they were, scarcely 
noticeable to the casual reader, perhaps, but to passionate 
partisans sticking up like palm-trees on a plain. In a back- 
handed, sinuous but unmistakable way, the Post was telling 
the legislature that it had better postpone the reformatory 
for another two years. It was difficult to say just what 
phrase or phrases finally pushed the odious idea out into 
the light; but Sharlee lingered longest on a passage which, 
after referring to the “list of inescapable expenditures pub- 
lished elsewhere,” said: 

Immediacy, of course, was never the great question; but it was a 
question; and the Post has therefore watched with keen regret the 
rolling up of absolutely unavoidable expenses to the point where the 
spending of another dollar for any cause, however meritorious in itself, 
must be regarded as of dubious wisdom. 

That sentence was enough. It would be as good as a vol- 
ume to the powerful opposition in the House, hardly re- 
pressed heretofore by the Post's thunders. The reformatory, 
which they had labored for so long, was dead. 

The thought was bitter to the young assistant secretary. 
But from the first, her mind had jumped beyond it, to fasten 
on another and, to her, far worse one, a burning personal 
question by the side of which the loss of the reformatory 
seemed for the moment an unimportant detail. 


OUEED 347 

Which of the two men had done it ? 

Rev. Mr. Dayne was sitting bowed over his desk, his strong 
head clamped in his hands, the morning Post crumpled on 
the floor beside him. He did not look up when his assistant 
entered the office; his response to her “Good-morning” was 
of the briefest. Sharlee understood. It was only the corpo- 
real husk of her friend that was seated at the desk. All the 
rest of him was down at Ephesus fighting with the beasts, 
and grimly resolved to give no sign from the arena till he had 
set his foot upon their necks for the glory of God and the 
honor of his cloth. 

Sharlee herself did not feel conversational. In silence she 
took off her things, and, going over to her own desk, began 
opening the mail. In an hour, maybe more, maybe less, 
the Secretary stood at her side, his kind face calm as ever. 

“Well,” he said quietly, “how do you explain it?” 

Sharlee’s eyes offered him bay-leaves for his victory. # 

“ There is a suggestion about it,” said she, still rather white, 
“of thirty pieces of silver.” 

“Oh! We can hardly say that. Let us give him the bene- 
fit of the doubt, as long as there can be any doubt. Let us 
view it for the present as a death-bed repentance.” 

Him? Which did he mean? 

“ No,” said Sharlee, “it is not possible to view it that way. 
The Post has been as familiar with the arguments all along, 
from beginning to end, as you or I. It could not be hon- 
estly converted any more than you could. This,” said she, 
struggling to speak calmly, “is treachery.” 

“Appearances, I am sorry to say, are much that way. Still 
— I think we should not condemn the paper unheard.” 

“Then why not have the hearing at once? An explana- 
tion is — ” 

“I shall seek none,” interrupted Mr. Dayne, quietly. 
“The Post must volunteer it, if it has any to offer. Of 
course,” he went on, “we know nothing of the history of 
that editorial now. Of one thing, however, I feel absolutely 
certain; that is, that it was published without the know- 


348 QUEED 

ledge of Mr. West. Developments may follow. ... As for 
instance a shake-up in the staff.” 

That settled it. This good man whom she admired so much 
had not entertained a doubt that the editorial was from the 
brain and pen of Mr. Queed. 

She said painfully: “As to the effect upon the — the re- 
formatory — ” 

“ It is killed,” said Mr. Dayne, and went away to his desk. 

Sharlee turned in her desk-chair and looked out of the 
rain-blurred windows. 

Through and beyond the trees of the park, over ridges of 
roofs and away to the west and north, she saw the weather- 
beaten Post building, its distant gray tower cutting mistily 
out of the dreary sky. From where she sat she could just 
pick out, as she had so often noticed before, the tops of the 
fifth-floor row of windows, the windows from which the Post's 
editorial department looked out upon a world with which 
it could not keep faith. Behind one of those windows at 
this moment, in all likelihood, sat the false friend who ha<J 
cut down the reformatory from behind. 

Which was it? Oh, was not Mr. Dayne right, as he always 
was? Where was there any room for doubt? 

Long before Sharlee knew Charles Gardiner West per 
sonally, when she was a little girl and he just out of college* 
she had known him by report as a young man of fine ideals, 
exalted character, the very pattern of stainless honor. Her 
later intimate knowledge of him, she told herself, had fully 
borne out the common reputation. Wherever she had 
touched him, she had found him generous and sound and 
sweet. That he was capable of what seemed to her the bald- 
est and basest treachery was simply unthinkable. And what 
reason was there ever to drag his name into her thought of 
the affair at all? Was it not Mr. Queed who had written all 
the reformatory articles since Colonel Cowles’s death — 
Mr. Queed who had promised only twenty-four hours ago 
to do his utmost for the cause at the critical moment to-day? 

And yet . . . and yet . . . her mind clung desperately 


QUEED 349 

to the thought that possibly the assistant editor had not 
done this thing, after all. The memory of his visit to her, less 
than a week ago, was very vivid in her mind. What sort of 
world was it that a man with a face of such shining honesty 
could stoop to such shabby dishonesty? — that a man who 
had looked at her as he had looked at her that night, could 
turn again and strike her such a blow? That Queed should 
have done this seemed as inconceivable as that West should 
have done it. There was the wild hundredth chance that 
neither had done it, that the article had been written by some- 
body else and published by mistake. 

But the hope hardly fluttered its wings before her reason 
struck it dead. No, there was no way out there. The fact 
was too plain that one of her two good friends, under what 
pressure she could not guess, had consented to commit dis- 
honor and, by the same stroke, to wound her so deeply. For 
no honest explanation was possible; there was no argument 
in the case to-day that was not equally potent a month ago. 
It was all a story of cajolery or intimidation from the for- 
midable opposition, and of mean yielding in the places of re- 
sponsibility. And — yes — She felt it as bad for one of her 
two friends to be so stained as another. It had come to that. 
At last she must admit that they stood upon level ground in 
her imagination, the nameless little Doctor of two years back 
side by side with the beau ideal of all her girlhood. One’s 
honor was as dear to her as another’s; one’s friendship as 
sweet ; and now one of them was her friend no more. 

And it was not West whom she must cast out. There was 
no peg anywhere to hang even the smallest suspicion of 
him upon. She scourged her mind for seeking one. It was 
Queed who, at the pinch, had broken down and betrayed 
them with a kiss: Queed, of the obscure parentage, dubious 
inheritance, and omitted upbringing; Queed, whom she had 
first stood upon his feet and started forward in a world of 
men, had helped and counseled and guided, had admitted to 
her acquaintance, her friendship — for this. 

But because Sharlee had known Queed well as a man who 


350 QUEED 

loved truth, because the very thing that she had seen and 
most admired in him from the beginning was an unflinch- 
ing honesty of intellect and character, because of the re- 
membrance of his face as she had last seen it: a tiny corner 
of her mind, in defiance of all reason, revolted against this 
condemnation and refused to shut tight against him. All 
morning she sat at her work, torn by anxiety, hoping every 
moment that her telephone might ring with some unthought- 
of explanation, which would leave her with nothing worse 
upon her mind than the dead reformatory. But though the 
telephone rang often, it was never for this. 

Sitting in a corner of the House gallery, about noon, Mr. 
Dayne saw the reformatory bill, which he himself had writ- 
ten, called up out of order and snowed under. The only 
speech was made by the Solon who had the bill called up, a 
familiar organization wheelhorse, named MeachyT. Bangor, 
who quoted with unconcealed triumph from the morning’s 
Post , wholly ignoring all the careful safeguards and tearing 
out of the context only such portions as suited his humor and 
his need. Mr. Bangor pointed out that, inasmuch as the “ac- 
knowledged organ” of the State Department of Charities 
now at length “confessed” that the reformatory had better 
wait two years, there were no longer two sides to the ques- 
tion. Many of the gentleman’s hearers appeared to agree 
with him. They rose and fell upon the bill, and massacred it 
by a vote of 54 to 32. 

From “Sis” Hopkins, legislative reporter of the Post , the 
news went skipping over the telephone wire to the editorial 
rooms, where the assistant editor, who received it, remarked 
that he was sorry to hear it. That done, the assistant hung 
up the receiver, and resumed work upon an article entitled 
“A Constitution for Turkey? ” He had hardly added a sen- 
tence to this composition before West came in and, with a 
cheery word of greeting, passed into his own office. 

The assistant editor went on with his writing. He looked 
worn this morning, Henry Surface’s son, and not without 


QUEED 351 

reason. Half the night he had shared the nurse’s vigil at the 
bedside of Surface, who lay in unbroken stupor. Half the 
night he had maintained an individual vigil in his own room, 
lying flat on his back and staring wide-eyed into the dark- 
ness. And on the heels of the day, there had come new 
trouble for him, real trouble, though in the general cata- 
clysm its full bearings and farther reaches did not at once 
come home to him. Running professionally through the 
Post at breakfast-time, his eye, like Miss Weyland’s, had 
been suddenly riveted by that paper’s remarks upon the 
reformatory. . . . What was the meaning of the staggering 
performance he had no idea, and need not inquire. Its im- 
mediate effect upon his own career was at least too plain for 
argument. His editorship and his reformatory had gone 
down together. 

Yet he was in no hurry now about following West into his 
sanctum. Of all things Queed, as people called him, de- 
spised heroics and abhorred a “scene.” Nothing could be 
gained by a quarrel now ; very earnestly he desired the inter- 
view to be as matter-of-fact as possible. In half an hour, 
when he had come to a convenient stopping-place, he opened 
the door and stood uncomfortably before the young man he 
had so long admired. 

West, sitting behind his long table, skimming busily 
through the paper with blue pencil and scissors, looked up 
with his agreeable smile. 

“Well! What do you see that looks likely for — What’s 
the matter? Are you sick to-day?” 

“No, I am quite well, thank you. I find very little in the 
news, though. You notice that a digest of the railroad bill is 
given out?” 

“Yes. You don’t look a bit well, old fellow. You must 
take a holiday after the legislature goes. Yes, I’m going to 
take the hide off that bill. Or better yet — you. Don’t you 
feel like shooting off some big guns at it?” 

“Certainly, if you want me to. There is the farmers’ con- 
vention, too. And by the way, I ’d like to leave as soon as 
you can fill my place.” 


352 QUEED 

West dropped scissors, pencil, and paper and stared at him 
with dismayed amazement. “Leave l Why, you are never 
thinking of leaving me!” 

'‘Yes. I’d — like to leave. I thought I ought to tell you 
this morning, so that you can at once make your plans as to 
my successor.” 

“ But my dear fellow ! I can’t let you leave me l You ’ve no 
idea how I value your assistance, how I ’ve come to lean and 
depend upon you at every point. I never dreamed you were 
thinking of this. What’s the matter? What have you got on 
your mind?” 

“I think,” said Queed, unhappily, “that I should be bet- 
ter satisfied off the paper than on it.” 

“Why, confound you — it’s the money!” said West, with 
a sudden relieved laugh. “Why did n’t you tell me, old fel- 
low? You’re worth five times what they’re paying you — 
five times as much as I am for that matter — and I can 
make the directors see it. Trust me to make them raise you 
to my salary at the next meeting.” 

“Thank you — but no, my salary is quite satisfactory.” 

West frowned off into space, looking utterly bewildered. 
“Of course,” he said in a troubled voice, “you have a per- 
fect right to resign without saying a word. I have n’t the 
smallest right to press you for an explanation against your 
will. But — good Lord! Here we’ve worked together side 
by side, day after day, for nearly a year, pretty good 
friends, as I thought, and — well, it hurts a little to have 
you put on your hat and walk out without a word. I wish 
you would tell me what ’s wrong. There ’s nothing I would n’t 
do, if I could, to fix it and keep you.” 

The eyes of the two men met across the table, and it was 
Queed ’s that faltered and fell. 

“Well,” he said, obviously embarrassed, “I find that I am 
out of sympathy with the policy of the paper.” 

“Oh-h-ho!” said West, slowly and dubiously. “Do you 
mean my article on the reformatory?” 

“Yes — I do.” 


QUEED 353 

“Why, my dear fellow !” 

West paused, his handsome eyes clouded, considering how 
best he might put the matter to overcome most surely the 
singular scruples of his assistant. 

“Let’s take it this way, old fellow. Suppose that my 
standpoint in that article was diametrically wrong. I am 
sure I could convince you that it was not, but admit, for 
argument’s sake, that it was. Do you feel that the appear- 
ance in the paper of an article with which you don’t agree 
makes it necessary for you, in honor, to resign?” 

“No, certainly not — ” 

“Is it that you don’t like my turning down one of your 
articles and printing one of my own instead? I did n’t know 
you objected to that, old fellow. You see — while your 
judgment is probably a hanged sight better than mine, 
after all I am the man who is held responsible, and I am paid 
a salary to see that my opinions become the opinions of the 
Post.” 

“It is entirely right that your opinions — ” 

“Then wherein have I offended? Be frank with me, like a 
good fellow, I beg you!” 

Queed eyed him strangely. Was the editor’s inner vision 
really so curiously astigmatic? 

“ I look at it this way,” he said, in a slow, controlled voice. 
“The Post has said again and again that this legislature must 
establish a reformatory. That was the burden of a long 
series of editorials, running back over a year, which, as I 
thought, had your entire approval. Now, at the critical mo- 
ment, when it was only necessary to say once more what had 
been said a hundred times before, the Post suddenly turns 
about and, in effect, authorizes this legislature not to estab- 
lish the reformatory. The House killed the bill just now. 
Bangor quoted from the Post editorial. There can be no 
doubt, of course, that it turned a number of votes — enough 
to have safely carried the bill.” 

West looked disturbed and unhappy. 

“But if we find out that this legislature is so drained by 


354 QUEED 

inescapable expenses that it simply cannot provide the 
money? Suppose the State had been swept by a plague? 
Suppose there was a war and a million of unexpected ex- 
penses had suddenly dropped on us from the clouds? 
Would n’t you agree that circumstances altered cases, and 
that, under such circumstances, everything that was not 
indispensable to the State’s existence would have to go 
over?” 

Queed felt like answering West’s pepper-fire of casuistry 
by throwing Eva Bernheimer at his head. Despite his de- 
termination to avoid a “scene,” he felt his bottled-up indig- 
nation rising. A light showed in his stone-gray eyes. 

“Can’t you really see that these circumstances are not in 
the least like those? Did you do me the courtesy to read 
what I wrote about this so-called ‘economy argument’ last 
night?” 

“Certainly,” said West, surprised by the other’s tone. 
“But clever as it was, it was not based, in my opinion, on a 
clear understanding of the facts as they actually exist. You 
and I stay so close inside of four walls here that we are apt 
to get out of touch with practical conditions. Yesterday, I 
was fortunate enough to get new facts, from a confidential 
and highly authoritative source. In the light of these — I 
wish I could explain them more fully to you, but I was 
pledged to secrecy — I am obliged to tell you that what you 
had written seemed to me altogether out of focus, unfair, and 
extreme.” 

“Did you get these facts, as you call them, from Plonny 
Neal?” 

“As to that, I am at liberty to say nothing.” 

Queed, looking at him, saw that he had. He began to feel 
sorry for West. 

“I would give four hundred and fifty dollars,” he said 
slowly — “all the money that I happen to have — if you 
had told me last night that you meant to do this.” 

“ I am awfully sorry,” said West, with a touch of dignity, 
“that you take it so hard. But I assure you — ” 


OUEED 355 

“ I know Plonny Neal even better than you do,” continued 
Queed, “for I have known him as his social equal. He is 
laughing at you to-day.’ * 

West, of course, knew better than that. The remark con- 
firmed his belief that Queed had brooded over the reforma- 
tory till he saw everything about it distorted and magnified. 

“Well, old fellow,” he said, without a trace of ill-humor in 
his voice or his manner, “then it is I he is laughing at — not 
you. That brings us right back to my point. If you feel, as 
I understand it, that the Post is in the position of having 
deserted its own cause, I alone am the deserter. Don’t you 
see that? Not only am I the editor of the paper, and so 
responsible for all that it says ; but I wrote the article, on my 
own best information and judgment. Whatever conse- 
quences there are,” said West, his thoughts on the conse- 
quences most likely to accrue to the saviour of the party, “ I 
assume them all.” 

“A few people,” said Queed, slowly, “know that I have 
been conducting this fight for the Post. They may not un- 
derstand that I was suddenly superseded this morning. But 
of course it is n’t that. It is simply a matter — ” 

“Believe me, it can all be made right. I shall take the 
greatest pleasure in explaining to your friends that I alone 
am responsible. I shall call to-day — right now — at — ” 

“I’m sorry,” said Queed, abruptly, “but it is entirely 
impossible for me to remain.” 

West looked, and felt, genuinely distressed. “I wish,” he 
said, “the old reformatory had never been born”; and he 
went on in a resigned voice: “Of course I can’t keep you with 
a padlock and chain, but — for the life of me, I can’t catch 
your point of view. To my mind it appears the honorable 
and courageous thing to correct a mistake, even at the last 
moment, rather than stand by it for appearance’s sake.” 

“You see I don't regard our principles as a mistake.” 

But he went back to his office marveling at himself for 
the ease with which West had put him in the wrong. 

For friendship’s sake, West had meant to call at the Chari- 


356 QUEED 

ties Department that day, and explain to his two friends 
there how his sense of responsibility to the larger good had 
made it necessary for him to inflict a momentary disap- 
pointment upon them. But this disturbing interview with 
his assistant left him not so sure that an immediate call 
would be desirable, after all. At the moment, both Dayne 
and the dearest girl in the world would naturally be feeling 
vexed over the failure of their plan; would n’t it be the sen- 
sible and considerate thing to give them a little time to con- 
quer their pique and compose themselves to see facts as they 
were? 

The Chronicle that afternoon finally convinced him that 
this would be the considerate thing. That offensive little busy- 
body, which pretended to have been a champion of “this 
people’s institution” came out with a nasty editorial, en- 
titled “The Post's Latest Flop.” “Flop” appeared to be an 
intensely popular word in the Chronicle office. The article 
boldly taxed “our more or less esteemed contemporary ” with 
the murder of the reformatory, and showed unpleasant free- 
dom in employing such phrases as “ instantaneous conver- 
sion,” “treacherous friendship,” “disgusting somersault- 
ing,” and the like. Next day, grown still more audacious, it 
had the hardihood to refer to the Post as “The Plonny Neal 
organ.” 

Now, of course, the reformatory had not been in any sense 
a burning public “ issue.” Measures like this, being solid and 
really important, seldom interest the people. There was not 
the smallest popular excitement over the legislature’s con- 
duct, or the Post's. The Chronicle's venomous remarks were 
dismissed as the usual “newspaper scrap.” All this West 
understood perfectly. Still, it was plain that a few enthusi- 
asts, reformatory fanatics, were taking the first flush of dis- 
appointment rather hard. For himself, West reflected, he 
cared nothing about their clamor. Conscious of having per- 
formed an unparalleled service to his party, and thus to his 
State, he was willing to stand for a time the indignation of 
the ignorant, the obloquy of the malicious, even revolt and 


OUEED 357 

disloyalty among his own lieutenants. One day the truth 
about his disinterested patriotism would become known. For 
the present he would sit silent, calmly waiting at least until 
unjust resentment subsided and reason reasserted her sway. 

Many days passed, as it happened, before West and the 
Secretary of Charities met; six days before West and the 
Assistant Secretary met. On the sixth night, about half- 
past seven in the evening, he came unexpectedly face to face 
with Sharlee Weyland in the vestibule of Mrs. Byrd, Senior’s, 
handsome house. In the days intervening, Sharlee’s state 
of mind had remained very much where it was on the first 
morning: only now the tiny open corner of her mind had 
shrunk to imperceptible dimensions. Of West she enter- 
tained not the smallest doubt ; and she greeted him like the 
excellent friend she knew him to be. 

There was a little dinner-dance at Mrs. Byrd’s, for the 
season’s debutantes. It became remembered as one of the 
most charming of all her charming parties. To the buds 
were added a sprinkling of older girls who had survived as 
the fittest, while among the swains a splendid catholicity 
as to age prevailed. A retinue of imported men, Caucasian 
at that, served dinner at six small tables, six at a table; the 
viands were fashioned to tickle tired epicures; there was 
vintage champagne such as kings quaff to pledge the com- 
ity of nations; Wissner’s little band of artists, known to 
command its own price, divinely mingled melody with the 
rose-sweetness of the air. West, having dined beautifully, 
and lingered over coffee in the smoking-room among the 
last, emerged to find the polished floors crowded with an 
influx of new guests, come to enliven the dance. His was, as 
ever, a Roman progress ; he stopped and was stopped every- 
where; like a happy opportunist, he plucked the flowers 
as they came under his hand, and gayly whirled from one 
measure to another. So the glorious evening was half spent 
before, in an intermission, he found himself facing Sharlee 
Weyland, who was uncommonly well attended, imploring 
her hand for the approaching waltz. 


358 QUEED 

Without the smallest hesitation, Sharlee drew her orna- 
mental pencil through the next name on her list, and ordered 
her flowers and fan transferred from the hands of Mr. 
Beverley Byrd to those of Mr. Charles Gardiner West. 

“Only,” said she, thinking of her partners, “you’ll have 
to hide me somewhere.” 

With a masterful grace which others imitated, indeed, but 
could not copy, West extricated his lady from her gallants, 
and led her away to a pretty haven; not indeed, to a con- 
servatory, since there was none, but to a bewitching nook 
under the wide stairway, all banked about with palm and 
fern and pretty flowering shrub. There they sat them down, 
unseeing and unseen, near yet utterly remote, while in the 
blood of West beat the intoxicating strains of Straus, not to 
mention the vintage champagne, to which he had taken a 
very particular fancy. 

All night, while the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, 
none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. 
Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, 
laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little 
lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew a care. In the 
dance, for he had watched her there, too, wondering, as she 
circled laughing by, whether she felt any lingering traces of 
pique with him, she had been the same: no girl ever wore a 
merrier heart. But a sudden change came now. In the 
friendly freedom of the green-banked alcove, Sharlee’s 
gayety dropped from her like a painted mask, which, having 
amused the children, has done its full part. Against the 
back of the cushioned settle where they sat she leaned a 
weary head, and frankly let her fringed lids droop. 

At another time West might have been pleased by such 
candid evidences of confidence and intimacy, but not to- 
night. He felt that Sharlee, having advertised a delightful 
gayety by her manner, should now proceed to deliver it: it 
certainly was not for tired sweetness and disconcerting 
silences that he had sought this t&te-d-tite. But at last 
his failure to arouse her on indifferent topics became too 


QUEED 359 

marked to be passed over; and then he said in a gentle 
voice : — 

“ Confess, Miss Weyland. You 're as tired as you can be.” 

She turned her head, and smiled a little into his eyes. 
“ Yes — you don’t mind, do you?” 

“Indeed I do, though! You’re going altogether too hard 
— working like a Trojan all day and dancing like a dryad 
all night. You’ll break yourself down — indeed you will!” 

Hardly conscious of it herself, Sharlee had been waiting 
with a tense anxiety of which her face began to give signs, 
for him to speak. And now she understood that he would not 
speak; and she knew why. . . . How her heart warmed to 
him for his honorable silence in defense of his unworthy 
friend. 

But she herself was under no such restraint. “It isn’t 
that,” she said quickly. “It’s the reformatory — I’ve 
worried myself sick over it.” 

West averted his gaze ; he saw that it had come, and in a 
peculiarly aggravated form. He recognized at once how im- 
possible it would be to talk the matter over, in a calm and 
rational way, under such conditions as these. This little girl 
had brooded over it till the incident had assumed grotesque 
and fantastic proportions in her mind. She was seeing 
visions, having nightmares. In a soothing, sympathetic 
voice, he began consoling her with the thought that a post- 
ponement for two brief years was really not so serious, 
and that — 

“It isn’t that!” she corrected him again, in the same 
voice. “That was pretty bad, but — what I have minded so 
much was M was the Post's desertion.” 

West’s troubled eyes fell. But some hovering imp of 
darkness instantly popped it into his head to ask: “Have 
you seen Queed?” 

“No,” said Sharlee, colorlessly. “Not since — ” 

“You — did n’t know, then, that he has left the Post?" 

“Left the Post!" she echoed, with a face suddenly rigid* 
“No! Did he? Won’t you tell me — ? ” 


360 QUEED 

West looked unhappily at the floor. “Well — I'd much 
rather not go into this now. But the fact is that he left 
because . . . well, we had a difference of opinion as to that 
reformatory article.” 

Sharlee turned hastily away, pretending to look for her 
fan. The sudden shutting of that tiny door had shot her 
through with unexpected pain. The last doubt fell now; all 
was plain. Mr. Queed had been discharged for writing an 
article which outraged his chief’s sense of honor, that 
knightly young chief who still would not betray him by a 
word. The little door clicked; Sharlee turned the key upon 
it and threw away the key. And then she turned upon West 
a face so luminous with pure trust that it all but unsteadied 
him. 

To do West justice, it was not until his words had started 
caroming down the eternal halls of time, that their possible 
implication dawned upon him. His vague idea had been 
merely to give a non-committal summary of the situation to 
ease the present moment; this to be followed, at a more 
suitable time, by the calm and rational explanation he had 
always intended. But the magical effect of his chance 
words, entirely unexpected by him, was quite too delightful 
to be wiped out. To erase this look from the tired little 
lady’s face by labored exposition and tedious statistic would 
be the height of clumsy unkindness. She had been unhappy; 
he had made her happy; that was all that was vital just now. 
At a later time, when she had stopped brooding over the 
thing and could see and discuss it intelligently, he would 
take her quietly and straighten the whole matter out for 
her. 

For this present, there was a look in her eyes which made a 
trip-hammer of his heart. Never had her face — less of the 
mere pretty young girl’s than he had ever seen it, somewhat 
worn beneath its color, a little wistful under her smile — 
seemed to him so immeasurably sweet. In his blood Straus 
and the famous Verzenay plied their dizzying vocations. 
Suddenly he leaned forward, seeing nothing but two wonder- 


QUEED 361 

ful blue eyes, and his hand fell upon hers, with a grip which 
claimed her out of all the world. 

“Sharlee — ” he said hoarsely. “Don’t you know 
that — ’’ 

But he was, alas, summarily checked. At just that min- 
ute, outraged partners of Miss Weyland’s espied and de- 
scended upon them with loud reproachful cries, and Charles 
Gardiner West’s moment of superb impetuosity had flow- 
ered in nothing. 

At a little earlier hour on the same evening, in a dining- 
room a mile away, eight men met “without political signifi- 
cance” to elect a new set of officers for the city. A bit of 
red-tape legislation permitted the people to ratify the choices 
at a “primary, ” to be held some months later; but the elec- 
tion came now. Unanimously, and with little or no discus- 
sion, the eight men elected one of their own number, Mr. 
Meachy T. Bangor by name, to the office of Mayor of the 
City. 

One of them then referred humorously to Mr. Bangor as 
just the sort of progressive young reformer that suited him. 
Another suggested, more seriously, that they might have to 
allow for the genuine article some day. Plonny Neal, who 
sat at the head of the table, as being the wisest of them, said 
that the organization certainly must expect to knuckle to 
reform some day; perhaps in eight years, perhaps in twelve 
years, perhaps in sixteen. 

“Got your young feller all picked out, Plonny?” queried 
the Mayor elect, Mr. Bangor, with a wink around the room. 

Plonny denied that he had any candidate. Under pressure, 
however, he admitted having his eye on a certain youth, a 
“dark horse” who was little known at present, but who, in 
his humble judgment, was a coming man. Plonny said that 
this man was very young just now, but would be plenty old 
enough before they would have need of him. 

Mr. Bangor once more winked at the six. “Why, Plonny, 
\ thought you were rooting for Charles Gardenia West.” 


362 QUEED 

4 ‘Then there’s two of ye,” said Plonny, dryly, “he being 
the other one.” 

He removed his unlighted cigar, and spat loudly into a 
tall brass cuspidor, which he had taken the precaution to 
place for just such emergencies. 

“Meachy,” said Plonny, slowly, “ I would n’t give the job 
of dog-catcher to a man you could n’t trust to stand by his 
friends.” 


XXVIII 

How Words can be like Blows , and Blue Eyes stab deep ; how 
Queed sits by a Bedside and reviews his Life; and how a 
Thought leaps at him and will not down. 

I N the first crushing burst of revelation, Queed had had a 
wild impulse to wash his hands of everything, and fly. 
He would pack Surface off to a hospital ; dispose of the 
house; escape back to Mrs. Paynter’s; forget his terrible 
knowledge, and finally bury it with Surface. His reason forti- 
fied the impulse at every point. He owed less than nothing 
to his father ; he had not the slightest responsibility either 
toward him or for him ; to acknowledge the relation between 
them would do no conceivable good to anybody. He would 
go back to the Scriptorium, and all would be as it had been 
before. 

But when the moment came either to go or to stay, an- 
other and deeper impulse rose against this one, and beat it 
down. Within him a voice whispered that though he might 
go back to the Scriptorium, he would never be as he had been 
before. Whether he acknowledged the relation or not, it was 
still there. And, in time, his reason brought forth material to 
fortify this impulse, too : it came out in brief, grim sentences 
which burned themselves into his mind. Surface was his 
father. To deny the primal blood- tie was not honorable. 
The sins of the fathers descended to the children. To sup- 
press Truth was the crowning blasphemy. 

Queed did not go. He stayed, resolved, after a violent 
struggle — it was all over in the first hour of his discovery — 
to bear his burden, shouldering everything that his sonship 
involved. 

By day and by night the little house stood very quiet. Its 
secret remained inviolate; the young man was still Mr. 


364 QUEED 

Queed, the old one still Professor Nicolovius, who had suf- 
fered the last of his troublesome “strokes.” Inside the dark- 
ened windows, life moved on silent heels. The doctor came, 
did nothing, and went. The nurse did nothing but stayed. 
Queed would have dismissed her at once, except that that 
would have been bad economy; he must keep his own more 
valuable time free for the earning of every possible penny. 
To run the house, he had, for the present, his four hundred 
and fifty dollars in bank, saved out of his salary. This, 
he figured, would last nine weeks. Possibly Surface would 
last longer than that : that remained to be seen. 

Late on a March afternoon, Queed finished a review ar- 
ticle — his second since he had left the newspaper, four days 
before — and took it himself to the post-office. He wanted 
to catch the night mail for the North; and besides his body, 
jaded by two days’ confinement, cried aloud for a little exer- 
cise. His fervent desire was to rush out all the articles that 
were in him, and get money for them back with all possible 
speed. But he knew that the market for this work was lim- 
ited. He must find other work immediately; he did not care 
greatly what kind it was, provided only that it was profit- 
able. Thoughts of ways and means, mostly hard thoughts, 
occupied his mind all the way downtown. And always it 
grew plainer to him how much he was going to miss, now of 
all times, his eighteen hundred a year from the Post. 

In the narrowest corridor of the post-office — like West in 
the Byrds’ vestibule — he came suddenly face to face with 
Sharlee Weyland. 

The meeting was unwelcome to them both, and both their 
faces showed it. Sharlee had told herself, a thousand times 
in a week, that she never wanted to see Mr. Queed again. 
Queed had known, without telling himself at all, that he did 
not want to see Miss Weyland, not, at least, till he had had 
more time to think. But Queed’s dread of seeing the girl had 
nothing to do with what was uppermost in her mind — the 
Post's treacherous editorial. Of course, West had long since 
made that right as he had promised, as he would have done 


QUEED 365 

with no promising. But — ought he to tell her now, or to 
wait? . . . And what would she say when she knew the 
whole shameful truth about him — knew that for nearly 
a year Surface Senior and Surface Junior, shifty father and 
hoodwinked son, had been living fatly on the salvage of her 
own plundered fortune? 

She would have passed him with a bow, but Queed, more 
awkward than she, involuntarily halted. The dingy gas- 
light, which happened to be behind him, fell full upon her 
face, and he said at once : — 

“ How do you do? — not very well, I fear. You look quite 
used up — not well at all.” 

Pride raised a red flag in her cheek. She lifted a great 
muff to her lips, and gave a little laugh. 

“ Thank you. I am quite well.” 

Continuing to gaze at her, he went ahead with customary 
directness: “Then I am afraid you have been taking — the 
reformatory too hard.” 

“No, not the reformatory. It is something worse than 
that. I had a friend once,” said Sharlee, muff to her lips, 
and her level eyes upon him, “and he was not worthy.” 

To follow out that thought was impossible, but Queed felt 
very sorry for West when he saw how she said it. 

“I’m sorry that you should have had this — to distress 
you. However — ” 

“Is n’t it rather late to think of that now? As to saying 
it — I should have thought that you would tell me of your 
sorrow immediately — or not at all.” 

A long look passed between them. Down the corridor, on 
both sides of them, flowed a stream of people bent upon 
mails; but these two were alone in the world. 

“Have you seen West?” asked Queed, in a voice unlike 
his own. 

She made a little movement of irrepressible distaste. 

“Yes. . . . But you must not think that he told me. He 
is too kind, too honorable — to betray his friend.” 

He stared at b?r. reft of the power of speech. 


366 QUEED 

From under the wide hat, the blue eyes seemed to leap out 
and stab him; they lingered, turning the knife, while their 
owner appeared to be waiting for him to speak; and then 
with a final twist, they were pulled away, and Queed found 
himself alone in the corridor. 

He dropped his long envelope in the slot labeled North , 
and turned his footsteps toward Duke of Gloucester Street 
again. 

Within him understanding had broken painfully into flame 
Miss Weyland believed that he was the author of the unfor- 
givable editorial — he , who had so gladly given, first the 
best abilities he had, and then his position itself, to the cause 
of Eva Bernheimer. West had seen her, and either through 
deliberate falseness or his characteristic fondness for shying 
off from disagreeable subjects — Queed felt pretty sure it 
was the latter — had failed to reveal the truth. West’s 
motives did not matter in the least. The terrible situation in 
which he himself had been placed was all that mattered, and 
that he must straighten out at once. What dumbness had 
seized his tongue just now he could not imagine. But it was 
plain that, however much he would have preferred not to see 
the girl at all, this meeting had made another one immedi- 
ately necessary : he must see her at once, to-night, and clear 
himself wholly of this cruel suspicion. And yet ... he could 
never clear himself of her having suspected him; he under- 
stood that, and it seemed to him a terrible thing. No matter 
how humble her contrition, how abject her apologies, nothing 
could ever get back of what was written, or change the fact 
that she had believed him capable of that. 

The young man pursued his thoughts over three miles of 
city streets, and returned to the house of Surface. 

The hour was 6.30. He took the nurse’s seat by the bed- 
side of his father and sent her away to her dinner. 

There was a single gas-light in the sick-room, turned just 
high enough for the nurse to read her novels. The old man 
lay like a log, though breathing heavily ; under the flickering 
light, his face looked ghastly. It had gone all to pieces; ad- 


QUEED 367 

vanced old age had taken possession of it in a night. More- 
over the truth about the auburn mustaches and goatee was 
coming out in snowy splotches; the fading dye showed a 
mottle of red and white not agreeable to the eye. Here was 
not merely senility, but ignoble and repulsive senility. 

His father ! . . . his father l O God ! How much better to 
have sprung, as he once believed, from the honest loins of 
Tim Queed! 

The young man averted his eyes from the detestable 
face of his father, and let his thoughts turn inward upon 
himself. For the first time in all his years, he found himself 
able to trace his own life back to its source, as other men 
do. A flying trip to New York, and two hours with Tim 
Queed, had answered all questions, cleared up all doubts. 
First of all, it had satisfied him that there was no stain 
upon his birth. Surface’s second marriage had been clan- 
destine, but it was genuine; in Newark the young man 
found the old clergyman who had officiated at the ceremony. 
His mother, it seemed, had been Miss Floretta May Earle, 
a “handsome young opery singer,” of a group, so Tim said, 
to which the gentleman, his father, had been very fond of 
giving his “riskay little bacheldore parties.” 

Tim’s story, in fact, was comprehensive at all points. He 
had been Mr. Surface’s coachman and favorite servant in 
the heyday of the Southern apostate’s metropolitan glories. 
About a year before the final catastrophe, Surface’s affairs 
being then in a shaky condition, the servants had been dis- 
missed, the handsome house sold, and the financier, in a 
desperate effort to save himself, had moved off somewhere 
to modest quarters in a side street. That was the last Tim 
heard of his old patron, till the papers printed the staggering 
news of his arrest. A few weeks later, Tim one day received 
a message bidding him come to see his former master in the 
Tombs. 

The disgraced capitalist’s trial was then in its early stages, 
but he entertained not the smallest hope of acquittal. 
Broken and embittered, he confided to his faithful servant 


368 QUEED 

that, soon after the break-up of his establishment, he had 
quietly married a wife ; that some weeks earlier she had pre- 
sented him with a son ; and that she now lay at the point of 
death with but remote chances of recovery. To supply her 
with money was impossible, for his creditors, he said, had 
not only swooped down like buzzards upon the remnant of 
his fortune, but were now watching his every move under 
the suspicion that he had managed to keep something back. 
All his friends had deserted him as though he were a leper, 
for his had been the unpardonable sin of being found out. 
In all the world there was no equal of whom he was not too 
proud to ask a favor. 

In short, he was about to depart for a long sojourn in 
prison, leaving behind a motherless, friendless, and penniless 
infant son. Would Tim take him and raise him as his own? 

While Tim hesitated over this amazing request, Surface 
leaned forward and whispered a few words in his ear. He had 
contrived to secrete a little sum of money, a very small sum, 
but one which, well invested as it was, would provide just 
enough for the boy’s keep. Tim was to receive twenty-five 
dollars monthly for his trouble and expense ; Surface pledged 
his honor as a gentleman that he would find a way to smug- 
gle this sum to him on the first of every month. Tim, being 
in straits at the time, accepted with alacrity. No, he could 
not say that Mr. Surface had exhibited any sorrow over the 
impending decease of his wife, or any affectionate interest in 
his son. In fact the ruined man seemed to regard the arrival 
of the little stranger — “ the brat,” as he called him — with 
peculiar exasperation. Tim gathered that he never expected 
or desired to see his son, whatever the future held, and that, 
having arranged for food and shelter, he meant to wash his 
hands of the whole transaction. The honest guardian’s sole 
instructions were to keep mum as the grave ; to provide the 
necessaries of life as long as the boy was dependent upon 
him; not to interfere with him in any way; but if he left, 
always to keep an eye on him, and stand ready to produce 
him on demand. To these things, and particularly to abso- 


QUEED 369 

lute secrecy, Tim was sworn by the most awful of oaths ; and 
so he and his master parted. A week later a carriage was 
driven up to Tim's residence in the dead of the night, and a 
small bundle of caterwauling humankind was transferred 
from the one to the other. Such was the beginning of the 
life of young Queed. The woman, his mother, had died a day 
or two before, and where she had been buried Tim had no 
idea. 

So the years passed, while the Queeds watched with 
amazement the subtly expanding verification of the adage 
that blood will tell. For Mr. Surface, said Tim, had been a 
great scholard, and used to sit up to all hours reading books 
that Thomason, the butler, could n’t make head nor tail of ; 
and so with Surface’s boy. He was the strange duckling 
among chickens who, with no guidance, straightway plumed 
himself for the seas of printed knowledge. Time rolled on. 
When Surface was released from prison, as the papers an- 
nounced, there occurred not the smallest change in the status 
of affairs ; except that the monthly remittances now bore 
the name of Nicolovius, and came from Chicago or some 
other city in the west. More years passed ; and at last, one 
day, after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, the unex- 
pected happened, as it really will sometimes. Tim got a 
letter in a handwriting he knew well, instructing him to call 
next day at such-and-such a time and place. 

Tim was not disobedient to the summons. He called ; and 
found, instead of the dashing young master he had once 
known, a soft and savage old man whom he at first utterly 
failed to recognize. Surface paced the floor and spoke his 
mind. It seemed that an irresistible impulse had led him 
back to his old home city; that he had settled and taken 
work there; and there meant to end his days. Under these 
circumstances, some deep-hidden instinct — a whim, the 
old man called it — had put it into his head to consider the 
claiming and final acknowledgment of his son. After all the 
Ishmaelitish years of bitterness and wandering, Surface’s 
blood, it seemed, yearned for his blood. But under no cir- 


370 QUEED 

cumstances, he told Tim, would he acknowledge his son be- 
fore his death, since that would involve the surrender of his 
incognito; and not even then, so the old man swore, unless 
he happened to be pleased with the youth — the son of his 
body whom he had so utterly neglected through all these 
years. Therefore, his plan was to have the boy where they 
would meet as strangers; where he could have an opportunity 
to watch, weigh, and come to know him in the most casual 
way; and thereafter to act as he saw fit. 

So there, in the shabby lodging-house, the little scheme 
was hatched out. Surface undertook by his own means to 
draw his son, as the magnet the particle of steel, to his city. 
Tim, to whom the matter wa'S sure to be broached, was to 
encourage the young man to go. But more than this: it was 
to be Tim’s diplomatic task to steer him to the house where 
Surface, as Nicolovius, resided. Surface himself had sug- 
gested the device by which this was to be done ; merely that 
Tim, mentioning the difficulties of the boarding-house ques- 
tion in a strange city, was to recall that through the lucky 
chance of having a cousin in this particular city, he knew of 
just the place: a house where accommodations were of the 
best, particularly for those who liked quiet for studious work, 
and prices ridiculously low. The little stratagem worked ad- 
mirably. The address which Tim gave young Surface was 
the address of Mrs. Paynter’s, where Surface Senior had lived 
for nearly three years. And so the young man had gone to 
his father, straight as a homing pigeon. 

How strange, how strange to look back on all this now! 

Half reclining in the nurse’s chair, unseeing eyes on the 
shaded and shuttered window, for the fiftieth time Queed 
let his mind go back over his days at Mrs, Paynter’s, reading 
them all anew in the light of his staggering knowledge. With 
three communications of the most fragmentary sort, his 
father had had his full will of his son. With six typewritten 
lines, he had drawn the young man to his side at his own good 
pleasure. Boarding-house gossip made it known that the son 
was in peril of ejectment for non-payment of board, and 


QUEED 371 

a twenty-dollar bill had been promptly transmitted — at 
some risk of discovery — to ease his stringency. Last came 
the mysterious counsel to make friends and to like people, 
the particular friends and people intended being consol- 
idated, he could understand now, in the person of old Nicol- 
ovius. And that message out of the unknown had had its 
effect: Queed could see that now, at any rate. His father 
clearly had been satisfied with the result; he appeared as 
his father no more. Thenceforward he stalked his prey as 
Nicolovius — with what consummate skill and success! 

Oh, but did he not have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, 
merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, 
flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever nar- 
rower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! 
Or no — Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible- 
eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze 
fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly 
down, twig by twig, ever nearer and nearer. 

But no — his metaphors were very bad ; he was sentimen- 
talizing, rhetorizing, a thing that he particularly abhorred. 
Not in any sense was he the pitiful prey_of his father, the 
hawk or the snake. Rather was he glad that, after long doubt 
and perplexity, at last he knew. For that was the passion of 
all his chaste life: to know the truth and to face it without 
fear. 

Surface stirred slightly in his bed, and Queed, turning his 
eyes, let them rest briefly on that repulsive face. His 
father I . . . And he must wear that name and shoulder that 
infamy forevermore! 

The nurse came back and relieved him of his vigil. He 
descended the stairs to his solitary dinner. And as he 
went, and while he lingered over food which he did not 
eat, his thoughts withdrew from his terrible inheritance to 
centre anew on the fact that, within an hour, he was to see 
Miss Weyland again. 

The prospect drew him while it even more strongly repelled* 


372 QUEED 

For a week he had hesitated, unable to convince himself 
that he was justified in telling Miss Weyland at once the 
whole truth about himself, his father, and her money. There 
was much on the side of delay. Surface might die at any 
moment, and this would relieve his son from the smallest 
reproach of betraying a confidence: the old man himself had 
said that everything was to be made known when he died. 
On the other hand Surface might get well, and if he did, he 
ought to be given a final chance to make the restitution him- 
self. Besides this, there was the great uncertainty about the 
money. Queed had no idea how much it was, or where it was, 
or whether or not, upon Surface’s death, he himself was to 
get it by bequest. But all through these doubts, passionately 
protesting against them, had run his own insistent feeling 
/v that it was not right to conceal the truth, even under such 
confused conditions — not, at least, from the one person who 
was so clearly entitled to know it. This feeling had reached 
a climax even before he met the girl this afternoon. Some- 
how that meeting had served to precipitate his decision. 
After all, Surface had had both his chance and his warn- 
ing. 

That his sonship would make him detestable in Miss 
Weyland ’s sight was highly probable, but he could not let 
the fear of that keep him silent. His determination to tell 
her the essential facts had come now, at last, as a kind of 
corollary to his instant necessity of straightening out the 
reformatory situation. This latter necessity had dominated 
his thought ever since the chance meeting in the post-office. 
And as his mind explored the subject, it ramified, and grew 
more complicated and oppressive with every step of the 
way. 

It gradually became plain to him that, in clearing himself 
of responsibility for the Post's editorial, he would have to 
put West in a very unpleasant position. He would have to 
convict him, not only of having written the perfidious article, 
but of having left another man under the reproach of having 
written it. But no; it could not be said that he was putting 


QUEED 373 

West in this position. West had put himself there. It was he 
who had written the article, and it was he who had kept si- 
lent about it. Every man must accept the responsibility for 
his own acts, or the world would soon be at sixes and sevens. 
In telling Miss Weyland the truth about the matter, as far 
as that went, he would be putting himself in an unpleasant 
position. Nobody liked to see one man “telling on ” another. 
He did not like it himself, as he remembered, for instance, in 
the case of young Brown in the Blaines College hazing affair. 

Queed sat alone in the candle-lit dining-room, thinking 
things out. A brilliant idea came to him. He would tele- 
phone to West, explain the situation to him, and ask him to 
set it right immediately. West, of course, would do so. At 
the worst, he had only temporized with the issue — perhaps 
had lost sight of it altogether — and he would be shocked to 
learn of the consequences of his procrastination. He himself 
could postpone his call on Miss Weyland till to-morrow, leav- 
ing West to go to-night. Of course, however, nothing his 
former chief could do now would change the fact that Miss 
Weyland herself had doubted him. 

Undoubtedly, the interview would be a painful one for 
West. How serious an offense the girl considered the editorial 
had been plain in his own brief conversation with her. And 
West .would have to acknowledge, further, that he had kept 
quiet about it for a week. Miss Weyland would forgive 
West, of course, but he could never be the same to her again. 
He would always have that spot. Queed himself felt that 
way about it. He had admired West more than any man he 
ever knew, more even than Colonel Cowles, but now he could 
never think very much of him again. He was quite sure that 
Miss Weyland was like that, too. Thus the matter began to 
grow very serious. For old Surface, who was always right 
about people, had said that West was the man that Miss 
Weyland meant to marry. 

Very gradually, for the young man was still a slow analyst 
where people were concerned, an irresistible conclusion was 
forced upon him. 


374 QUEED 

Miss Weyland would rather think that he had written the 
editorial than to know that West had written it. 

The thought, when he finally reached it, leapt up at him, 
but he pushed it away. However, it returned. It became 
like one of those swinging logs which hunters hang in trees 
to catch bears : the harder he pushed it away, the harder it 
swung back at him. 

He fully understood the persistence of this idea. It was 
the heart and soul of the whole question. He himself was 
simply Miss Weyland’s friend, the least among many. If be- 
lief in his dishonesty had brought her pain — and he had her 
word for that — it was a hurt that would quickly pass. False 
friends are soon forgotten. But to West belonged the shining 
pedestal in the innermost temple of her heart. It would go 
hard with the little lady to find at the last moment this stain 
upon her lover’s honor. 

He had only to sit still and say nothing to make her happy. 
That was plain. So the whole issue was shifted. It was not, 
as it had first seemed, merely a matter between West and 
himself. The real issue was between Miss Weyland and him- 
self — between her happiness and his . . . no, not his hap- 
piness — his self-respect, his sense of justice, his honor, his 
chaste passion for Truth, his . . . yes, his happiness. 

Did he think most of Miss Weyland or of himself? That 
was what it all came down to. Here was the new demand 
that his acknowledgment of a personal life was making upon 
him, the supreme demand, it seemed, that any man’s per- 
sonal life could ever make upon him. For if, on the day when 
Nicolovius had suddenly revealed himself as Surface, he had 
been asked to give himself bodily, he was now asked to give 
himself spiritually — to give all that made him the man he 
was. 

From the stark alternative, once raised, there was no 
escape. Queed closed with it, and together they went down 
into deep waters. 


XXIX 

In which Queed's Shoulders can hear One Man's Roguery and 
Another's Dishonor, and of what these Fardels cost him: how 
for the Second Time in his Life he stays out of Bed to think. 

S HARLEE, sitting upstairs, took the card from the tray 
and, seeing the name upon it, imperceptibly hesitated. 
But even while hesitating, she rose and turned to her 
dressing-table mirror. 

“Very well. Say that I’ll be down in a minute.” 

She felt nervous, she did not know why; chilled at her 
hands and cold within; she rubbed her cheeks vigorously 
with a handkerchief to restore to them some of the color 
which had fled. There was a slightly pinched look at the 
corners of her mouth, and she smiled at her reflection in the 
glass, somewhat artificially and elaborately, until she had 
chased it away. Undoubtedly she had been working too hard 
by day, and going too hard by night ; she must let up, stop 
burning the candle at both ends. But she must see Mr. 
Queed, of course, to show him finally that no explanation 
could explain now. It came into her mind that this was but 
the third time he had ever been inside her house — the third, 
and it was the last. 

He had been shown into the front parlor, the stiffer and 
less friendly of the two rooms, and its effect of formality 
matched well with the temper of their greeting. By the ob- 
vious stratagem of coming down with book in one hand and 
some pretense at fancy-work in the other, Sharlee avoided 
shaking hands with him. Having served their purpose, the 
small burdens were laid aside upon the table. He had been 
standing, awaiting her, in the shadows near the mantel ; the 
chair that he chanced to drop into stood almost under one of 
the yellow lamps; and when she saw his face, she hardly re- 


37$ QUEED 

pressed a start. For he seemed to have aged ten years since 
he last sat in her parlor, and if she had thought his face long 
ago as grave as a face could be, she now perceived her mis- 
take. 

The moment they were seated he began, in his usual voice, 
and with rather the air of having thought out in advance ex- 
actly what he was to say. 

“I have come again, after all, to talk only of definite 
things. In fact, I have something of much importance to 
tell you. May I ask that you will consider it as confiden- 
tial for the present?’' 

At the very beginning she was disquieted by the discovery 
that his gaze was steadier than her own. She was annoy- 
ingly conscious of looking away from him, as she said: — 

“I think you have no right to ask that of me.” 

Surface’s son smiled sadly. “It is not about — anything 
that you could possibly guess. I have made a discovery of 
— a business nature, which concerns you vitally.” 

“ A discovery?” 

“Yes. The circumstances are such that I do not feel that 
anybody should know of it just yet, but you. However — ” 

“I think you must leave me to decide, after hearing 
you — ” 

“I believe I will. I am not in the least afraid to do so. 
Miss Weyland, Henry G. Surface is alive.” 

Her face showed how completely taken back she was by 
the introduction of this topic, so utterly remote from the 
subject she had expected of him. 

“Not only that,” continued Queed, evenly — “he is within 
reach. Both he — and some property which he has — are 
within reach of the courts.” 

“Oh! How do you know? . . . Where is he?” 

“ For the present I am not free to answer those questions.” 

There was a brief silence. Sharlee looked at the fire, the 
stirrings of painful memories betrayed in her eyes. 

“We knew, of course, that he might be still alive,” she 
said slowly. “I — hope he is well and happy. But — we 


OUEED 377 

have no interest in him now. That is all closed and done 
with. As for the courts — I am sure that he has been pun- 
ished already more than enough.” 

“It is not a question of punishing him any more. You 
fail to catch my meaning, it seems. It has come to my 
knowledge that he has some money, a good deal of it — ” 

“But you cannot have imagined that I would want his 
money?” 

“ His money? He has none. It is all yours. That is why I 
am telling you about it.” 

“Oh, but that can’t be possible. I don’t understand.” 

Sitting upright in his chair, as businesslike as an attorney, 
Queed explained how Surface had managed to secrete part of 
the embezzled trustee funds, and had been snugly living on 
it ever since his release from prison. 

“The exact amount is, at present, mere guesswork. But I 
think it will hardly fall below fifty thousand dollars, and it 
may run as high as a hundred thousand. I learn that Mr. 
Surface thinks, or pretends to think, that this money be- 
longs to him. He is, needless to say, wholly mistaken. I have 
taken the liberty of consulting a lawyer about it, of course 
laying it before him as a hypothetical case. I am advised 
that when Mr. Surface was put through bankruptcy, he must 
have made a false statement in order to withhold this 
money. Therefore, that settlement counts for nothing, ex- 
cept to make him punishable for perjury now. The money 
is yours whenever you apply for it. That — ” 

4 'Oh — but I shall not apply for it. I don’t want it, yoir 
see.” 

“ It is not a question of whether you want it or not. It is 
yours — in just the way that the furniture in this room is 
yours. You simply have no right to evade it.” 

Through all the agitation she felt in the sudden dragging 
out of this long-buried subject, his air of dictatorial authority 
brought the blood to her cheek. 

“ I have a right to evade it, in the first place, and in the 
second, I am not evading it at all. He took it ; I let him keep 


378 QUEED 

it. That is the whole situation. I don’t want it — I could n’t 
touch it — ” 

“Well, don’t decide that now. There would be no harm, I 
suppose, in your talking with your mother about it — even 
with some man in whose judgment you have confidence. 
You will feel differently when you have had time to think it 
over. Probably it — ” 

“Thinking it over will make not the slightest difference 
in the way I feel — ” 

“Perhaps it would if you stopped thinking about it from a 
purely selfish point of view. Other — ’’ 

11 What?" 

“I say,” he repeated dryly, “that you should stop think- 
ing of the matter from a purely selfish point of view. Don’t 
you know that that is what you are doing? You are think- 
ing only whether or not you, personally, desire this money. 
Well, other people have an interest in the question besides 
you. There is your mother, for example. Why not consider 
it from her standpoint? Why not consider it from — well, 
from the standpoint of Mr. Surface?” 

“Of Mr. Surface?” 

“Certainly. Suppose that in his old age he has become 
penitent, and wants to do what he can to right the old wrong. 
Would you refuse him absolution by declining to accept your 
own money?” 

“I think it will be time enough to decide that when Mr. 
Surface asks me for absolution.” 

“ Undoubtedly. I have particularly asked, you remember, 
that you do not make up your mind to anything now.” 

“But you,” said she, looking at him steadily enough 
now — “I don’t understand how you happen to be here 
apparently both as my counselor and Mr. Surface’s 
agent.” 

“I have a right to both capacities, I assure you.” 

“ Or — have you a habit of being — ? ” 

She left her sentence unended, and he finished it for her in 
a colorless voice. 


QUEED 379 

“ Of being on two sides of a fence, perhaps you were about 
to say?” 

She made no reply. 

“That is what you were going to say, is n’t it?” 

“Yes, I started to say that,” she answered, “and then I 
thought better of it.” 

She spoke calmly; but she was oddly disquieted by his 
fixed gaze, and angry with herself for feeling it. 

“I will tell you,” said he, “how I happen to be acting in 
both capacities.” 

The marks of his internal struggle broke through upon his 
face. For the first time, it occurred to Sharlee, as she looked 
at the new markings about his straight-cut mouth, that this 
old young man whom she had commonly seen so matter-of- 
fact and self-contained, might be a person of stronger emo- 
tions than her own. After all, what did she really know about 
him? 

As if to answer her, his controlled voice spoke. 

“Mr. Surface is my father. I am his son.” 

She smothered a little cry. “ Your father I" 

“My name,” he said, with a face of stone, “is Henry G. 
Surface, Jr.” 

“Your father!” she echoed lifelessly. 

Shocked and stunned, she turned her head hurriedly 
away; her elbow rested on the broad chair-arm, and her 
chin sank into her hand. Surface’s son looked at her. It was 
many months since he had learned to look at her as at a 
woman, and that is knowledge that is not unlearned. His 
eyes rested upon her piled-up mass of crinkly brown hair; 
upon the dark curtain of lashes lying on her cheek; upon 
the firm line of the cheek, which swept so smoothly into the 
white neck; upon the rounded bosom, now rising and falling 
so fast; upon the whole pretty little person which could so 
stir him now to undreamed depths of his being. . . . No 
altruism here, Fifi ; no self-denial to want to make her happy. 

He began speaking quietly. 

“I can’t tell you now how I found out all this. It is a long 


380 QUEED 

story; you will hear it all some day. But the facts are all 
clear. I have been to New York and seen Tim Queed. It is 
— strange, is it not? Do you remember that afternoon in my 
office, when I showed you the letters from him? We little 
thought — ” 

“Oh me!” said Sharlee. “Oh me!” 

She rose hastily and walked away from him, unable to 
bear the look on his face. For a pretense of doing something, 
she went to the fire and poked aimlessly at the glowing 
coals. 

As on the afternoon of which he spoke, waves of pity for 
the little Doctor’s worse than fatherlessness swept through 
her ; only these waves were a thousand times bigger and 
stormier than those. How hardly he himself had taken his 
sonship she read in the strange sadness of his face. She 
dared not let him see how desperately sorry for him she felt; 
the most perfunctory phrase might betray her. Her know- 
ledge of his falseness stood between them like a wall ; blindly 
she struggled to keep it staunch, not letting her rushing pity 
undermine and crumble it. He had been false to her, like his 
father. Father and son, they had deceived and betrayed 
her; honor and truth were not in them. 

“So you see,’’ the son was saying, “ I have a close personal 
interest in this question of the money. Naturally it — • 
means a good deal to me to — have as much of it as pos- 
sible restored. Of course there is a great deal which — he 
took, and which — we are not in position to restore at pre- 
sent. I will explain later what is to be done about that — ” 

“Oh, don’t! ” she begged. “ I never want to see or hear of 
it again.” 

Suddenly she turned upon him, aware that her self-control 
was going, but unable for her life to repress the sympathy for 
him which welled up overwhelmingly from her heart. 

“Won’t you tell me something more about it? Please do! 
Where is he? Have you seen him — ?” 

“I cannot tell you — ” 

“Oh, I will keep your confidence. You asked me if 1 


QUEED 381 

would. I will — won’t you tell me? Is he here — in the 
city — ?” 

“You must not ask me these questions,” he said with 
some evidence of agitation. 

But even as he spoke, he saw knowledge dawn painfully 
on her face. His shelter, after all, was too small; once her 
glance turned that way, once her mind started upon conjec- 
tures, discovery had been inevitable. 

“Oh!” she cried, in a choked voice. . . . “It is Professor 
Nicolovius!” 

He looked at her steadily ; no change passed over his face. 
When all was said, he was glad to have the whole truth out; 
and he knew the secret to be as safe with her as with him- 
self. 

“No one must know,” he said sadly, “until his death. 
That is not far away, I think.” 

She dropped into a chair, and suddenly buried her face in 
her hands. 

Surface’s son had risen with her, but he did not resume 
his seat. He stood looking down at her bowed head, and the 
expression in his eyes, if she had looked up and captured it, 
might have taken her completely by surprise. 

His chance, indeed, had summoned him, though not for 
the perfect sacrifice. Circumstance had crushed out most 
of the joy of giving. For, first, she had suspected him, which 
nothing could ever blot out; and now, when she knew the 
truth about him, there could hardly be much left for him to 
give. It needed no treacherous editorial to make her hate 
the son of his father; their friendship was over in any case. 

Still, it was his opportunity to do for her something 
genuine and large; to pay in part the debt he owed her — 
the personal and living debt, which was so much greater 
than the dead thing of principal and interest. 

No, no. It was not endurable that this proud little lady, 
who kept her head so high, should find at the last moment, 
this stain upon her lover’s honor. 

She dropped her hands and lifted a white face. 


382 QUEED 

“ And you — ” she began unsteadily, but checked herself 
and went on in a calmer voice. “And you — after what he 
has done to you, too — you are going to stand by him — take 
his name — accept that inheritance — be his son?" 

“What else is there for me to do?" 

Their eyes met, and hers were hurriedly averted. 

“Don’t you think," he said, “that that is the only thing 
to do?" 

Again she found it impossible to endure the knowledge of 
his fixed gaze. She rose once more and stood at the mantel, 
her forehead leaned against her hand upon it, staring unsee- 
ingly down into the fire. 

“ How can I tell you how fine a thing you are doing — how 
big — and splendid — when — " 

A dark red color flooded his face from neck to forehead ; it 
receded almost violently leaving him whiter than before. 

“Not at all! Not in the least!" he said, with all his old 
impatience. “I could not escape if I would." 

She seemed not to hear him. “ How can I tell you that — 
and about how sorry I am — when all the time it seems that 
I can think only of — something else!" 

“You are speaking of the reformatory," he said, with 
bracing directness. 

There followed a strained silence. 

“Oh," broke from her — “how could you bear to do it?" 

“ Don’t you see that we cannot possibly discuss it? It is a 
question of one’s honor — is n’t it? It is impossible that such 
a thing could be argued about.” 

“But — surely you have something to say — some ex- 
planation to make ! Tell me. You will not find me — a hard 
judge." 

“I’m sorry," he said brusquely, “but I can make no 
explanation." 

She was conscious that he stood beside her on the hearth- 
rug. Though her face was lowered and turned from him, the 
eye of her mind held perfectly the presentment of his face, 
and she knew that more than age had gone over it since she 


QUEED 383 

had seen it last. Had any other man in the world but West 
been in the balance, she felt that, despite his own words, she 
could no longer believe him guilty. And even as it was — 
how could that conceivably be the face of a man who — 

‘‘Won’t you shake hands?” 

Turning, she gave him briefly the tips of fingers cold as 
ice. As their hands touched, a sudden tragic sense over- 
whelmed him that here was a farewell indeed. The light 
contact set him shaking; and for a moment his iron self- 
control, which covered torments she never guessed at, almost 
forsook him. 

‘‘Good-by. And may that God of yours who loves all that 
is beautiful and sweet be good to you — now and always.” 

She made no reply ; he wheeled, abruptly, and left her. But 
on the threshold he was checked by the sound of her voice. 

The interview, from the beginning, had profoundly af- 
fected her; these last words, so utterly unlike his usual man- 
ner of speech, had shaken her through and through. For 
some moments she had been miserably aware that, if he 
would but tell her everything and throw himself on her 
mercy, she would instantly forgive him. And now, when 
she saw that she could not make him do that, she felt that 
tiny door, which she had thought double-locked forever, 
creaking open, and heard herself saying in a small, desper- 
ate voice: — 

“ You did write it , did n't you?" 

But he paused only long enough to look at her and say, 
quite convincingly: — 

‘‘You need hardly ask that — now — need you?” 

He went home, to his own bedroom, lit his small student- 
lamp, and sat down at his table to begin a new article. The 
debt of money which was his patrimony required of him that 
he should make every minute tell now. 

In old newspaper files at the State Library, he had found 
the facts of his father’s defalcations. The total embezzle- 
ment from the Weyland estate, allowing for $14,000 recov- 


384 OUEED 

ered in the enforced settlement of Surface’s affairs, stood at 
$203,000. But that was twenty-seven years ago, and in all 
this time interest had been doubling and redoubling: simple 
interest, at 4%, brought it to $420,000; compound interest 
to something like $500,000, due at the present moment. 
Against this could be credited only his father’s “nest-egg” 

— provided always that he could find it — estimated at not 
less than $50,000. That left his father’s son staring at a 
debt of $450,000, due and payable now. It was of course, 
utterly hopeless. The interest on that sum alone was $18,000 
a year, and he could not earn $5000 a year to save his im- 
mortal soul. 

So the son knew that, however desperately he might 
strive, he would go to his grave more deeply in debt to Shar- 
lee Weyland than he stood at this moment. But of course 
it was the trying that chiefly counted. The fifty thousand 
dollars, which he would turn over to her as soon as he got it 

— how he was counting on a sum as big as that ! — would be 
a help ; so would the three or four thousand a year which he 
would surely pay toward keeping down the interest. This 
money in itself would be a good. But much better than 
that, it would stand as a gage that the son acknowledged and 
desired to atone for his father’s dishonor. 

His book must stand aside now — it might be forever. 
Henceforward he must count his success upon a cash-regis- 
ter. But to-night his pencil labored and dragged. What he 
wrote he saw was not good. He could do harder things than 
force himself to sit at a table and put writing upon paper; but 
over the subtler processes of his mind, which alone yields the 
rich fruit, no man is master. In an hour he put out his lamp, 
undressed in the dark, and went to bed. 

He lay on his back in the blackness, and in all the world 
he could find nothing to think about but Sharlee Wey- 
land. 

Of all that she had done for him, in a personal way, he had 
at least tried to give her some idea; he was glad to remember 
that now. And now at the last, when he was nearer worthy 


QUEED 385 

than ever before, she had turned him out because she be- 
lieved that he had stooped to dishonor. She would have for- 
given his sonship ; he had been mistaken about that. She had 
felt sympathy and sorrow for Henry Surface’s son, and not 
repulsion, for he had read it in her face. But she could not 
forgive him a personal dishonor. And he was glad that, so 
believing, she would do as she had done; it was the per- 
fect thing to do; to demand honor without a blemish, or to 
cancel all. Never had she stood so high in his fancy as 
now when she had ordered him out of her life. His heart 
leapt with the knowledge that, though she would never know 
it, she was his true mate there, in their pure passion for Truth. 

Whatever else might or might not have been, the know- 
ledge remained with him that she herself had suspected and 
convicted him. In all that mattered their friendship had 
ended there. Distrust was unbearable between friends. It 
was a flaw in his little lady that she could believe him capable 
of baseness. . . . But not an unforgivable flaw, it would 
seem, since every hour that he had spent in her presence had 
become roses and music in his memory, and the thought that 
he would see her no more stabbed ceaselessly at his heart. 

Yes, Surface’s son knew very well what was the matter with 
him now. The knowledge pulled him from his bed to a seat 
by the open window ; dragged him from his chair to send him 
pacing on bare feet up and down his little bedroom, up and 
down, up and down; threw him later, much later, into his 
chair again, to gaze out, quiet and exhausted, over the sleep- 
ing city. 

He had written something of love in his time. In his per- 
fect scheme of human society, he had diagnosed with sci- 
entific precision the instinct of sex attraction implanted in 
man’s being for the most obvious and grossly practical of 
reasons: an illusive candle-glow easily lit, quickly extin- 
guished when its uses were fulfilled. And lo, here was love 
tearing him by the throat till he choked ; an exquisite torture, 
a rampant passion, a devastating flame, that most glorified 
when it burned most deeply, aroar and ablaze forevermore. 


386 OUEED 

He sat by the window and looked out over the sleeping 
city. 

By slow degrees, he had allowed himself to be drawn from 
his academic hermitry into contact with the visible life 
around him. And everywhere that he had touched life, it had 
turned about and smitten him. He had meant to be a great 
editor of the Post some day, and the Post had turned him out 
with a brand of dishonor upon his forehead. He had tried to 
befriend a friendless old man, and he had acquired a father 
whose bequest was a rogue’s debt, and his name a byword 
and a hissing. He had let himself be befriended by a slim 
little girl with a passion for Truth and enough blue eyes for 
two, and the price of that contact was this pain in his heart 
which would not be still . . . which would not be still. 

Yet he would not have had anything different, would not 
have changed anything if he could. He was no longer the 
pure scientist in the observatory, but a bigger and better 
thing, a man ... A man down in the thick of the hurly- 
burly which we call This Life, and which, when all is said, is 
all that we certainly know. Not by pen alone, but also by 
body and mind and heart and spirit, he had taken his man’s 
place in Society. And as for this unimagined pain that strung 
his whole being upon the thumb-screw, it was nothing but 
the measure of the life he had now, and had it more abund- 
antly. Oh, all was for the best, all as it should be. He knew 
the truth about living at last, and it is the truth that makes 
men free. 


XXX 


Death of the Old Professor , and how Queed finds that his List of 
Friends has grown; a Last Will and Testament; Exchange 
of Letters among Prominent Attorneys , which unhappily 
proves futile. 



N the merriest, maddest day in March, Henry G. Sur- 


face, who had bitterly complained of earthly justice, 


slipped away to join the invisible procession which 
somewhere winds into the presence of the Incorruptible 
Judge. He went with his lips locked. At the last moment 
there had been faint signs of recurring consciousness; the 
doctor had said that there was one chance in a hundred that 
the dying man might have a normal moment at the end. 
On this chance his son had said to the nurse, alone with 
him in the room : — 

“Will you kindly leave me with him a moment? If he 
should be conscious there is a private question of importance 
that I must ask him.” 

She left him. The young man knelt down by the bedside, 
and put his lips close to the old man’s ear. Vainly he tried to 
drive his voice into that stilled consciousness, and drag from 
his father the secret of the hiding-place of his loot. 

“Father!” he said, over and over. “Father! Where is the 
money?” 

There was no doubt that the old man stirred a little. In 
the dim light of the room it seemed to his son that his right 
eye half opened, leaving the other closed in a ghastly parody 
of a wink, while the upper lip drew away from the strong 
teeth like an evil imitation of the old bland sneer. But that 
was all. 

So Surface died, and was gathered to his fathers. The em- 
bargo of secrecy was lifted ; and the very first step toward 


388 QUEED 

righting the ancient wrong was to let the full facts be known. 
Henry G. Surface, Jr., took this step, in person, by at once 
telephoning all that was salient to the Post. Brower Williams, 
the Post's city editor, at the other end of the wire, called the 
name of his God in holy awe at the dimensions of the scoop 
thus dropped down upon him as from heaven ; and implored 
the Doc, for old time’s sake, by all that he held most sacred 
and most dear, to say not a word till the evening papers were 
out, thus insuring the sensation for the Post . 

Mr. Williams’s professional appraisement of the scoop 
proved not extravagant. The Post's five columns next morn- 
ing threw the city into something like an uproar. It is doubt- 
ful if you would not have to go back to the ’6o’s to find a 
newspaper story which eclipsed this one in effect. For a gen- 
eration, the biography of Henry G. Surface had had, in that 
city and State, a quality of undying interest, and the sudden 
denouement, more thrilling than any fiction, captured the 
imagination of the dullest. Nothing else was mentioned at 
any breakfast-table where a morning paper was taken that 
day; hardly anything for many breakfasts to follow.' In 
homes containing boys who had actually studied Greek un- . 
der the mysterious Professor Nicolovius at Milner’s School, 
feeling waxed quite hysterical; while at Mrs. Paynter’s, 
where everybody was virtually a leading actor in the moving 
drama, the excitement closely approached delirium. 

Henry G. Surface, Jr., was up betimes on the morning after 
his father’s death — in fact, as will appear, he had not found 
time to go to bed at all — and the sensational effects of the 
Post's story were not lost upon him. As early as seven o’clock, 
a knot of people had gathered in front of the little house on 
Duke of Gloucester Street, staring curiously at the shut 
blinds, and telling each other, doubtless, how well they had 
known the dead man. When young Surface came out of the 
front door, an awed hush fell upon them; he was aware of 
their nudges, and their curious but oddly respectful stare. 
And this, at the very beginning, was typical of the whole day ; 
wherever he went, he found himself an object of the frankest 


QUEED 389 

public curiosity. But all of this interest, he early discovered, 
was neither cool nor impersonal. 

To begin with, there was the Post's story itself. As he hur- 
ried through it very early in the morning, the young man 
was struck again and again with the delicacy of the phrasing. 
And gradually it came to him that the young men of the Post 
had made very special efforts to avoid hurting the feelings of 
their old associate and friend the Doc. This little discovery 
had touched him unbelievably. And it was only part with 
other kindness that came to him to soften that first long day 
of his acknowledged sonship. Probably the sympathy ex- 
tended to him from various sources was not really so abund- 
ant, but to him, having looked for nothing, it was simply 
overwhelming. All day, it seemed to him, his door-bell and 
telephone rang, all day unexpected people of all sorts and 
conditions stopped him on the street — only to tell him, in 
many ways and sometimes without saying a word about it, 
that they were sorry. 

The very first of them to come was Charles Gardiner West, 
stopping on his way to the office, troubled, concerned, truly 
.sympathetic, to express, in a beautiful and perfect way, his 
lasting interest in his one-time assistant. Not far behind him 
had come Mr. Hickok, the director who looked like James E. 
Winter, who had often chatted with the assistant editor in 
times gone by, and who spoke confidently of the day when he 
Would come back to the Post . Beverley Byrd had come, too, 
manly and friendly; Plonny Neal, ill at ease for once in his 
life ; Evan Montague, of the Post , had asked to be allowed to 
make the arrangements for the funeral; Buck Klinker had 
actually made those arrangements. Better than most of 
these, perhaps, were the young men of the Mercury, raw, 
embarrassed, genuine young men, who, stopping him on the 
street, did not seem to know why they stopped him, who, 
lacking West’s verbal felicity, could do nothing but take his 
hand, hot with the fear that they might be betrayed into 
expressing feeling, and stammer out: “ Doc, if you want any- 
thing — why dammit, Doc — you call on me, hear?” 


390 QUEED 

Best of all had been Buck Klinker — Buck, who had made 
him physically, who had dragged him into contact with life 
over his own protests, who had given him the first editorial 
he ever wrote that was worth reading — Buck, the first real 
friend he had ever had. It was to Buck that he had tele- 
phoned an hour after his father’s death, for he needed help 
of a practical sort at once, and his one-time trainer was the 
man of all men to give it to him. Buck had come, constrained 
and silent; he was obviously awed by the Doc’s sudden 
emergence into stunning notoriety. To be Surface’s son was, 
to him, like being the son of Iscariot and Lucrezia Borgia. 
On the other hand, he was aware that, of Klinkers and 
Queeds, a Surface might proudly say: “There are no such 
people.” So he had greeted his friend stiffly as Mr. Surface, 
and was amazed at the agitation with which that usually im- 
passive young man had put a hand upon his shoulder and 
said : “ I ’m the same Doc always to you, Buck, only now I ’m 
Doc Surface instead of Doc Queed.” After that everything 
had been all right. Buck had answered very much after the 
fashion of the young men of the Mercury, and then rushed off 
to arrange for the interment, and also to find for Doc Sur- 
face lodgings somewhere which heavily undercut Mrs. Payn- 
ter’s modest prices. 

The sudden discovery that he was not alone in the world, 
that he had friends in it, real friends who believed in him and 
whom nothing could ever take away, shook the young man 
to the depths of his being. Was not this compensation for 
everything? Never had he imagined that people could be so 
kind; never had he dreamed that people’s kindness could 
mean so much to him. In the light of this new knowledge, it 
seemed to him that the last scales fell from his eyes. . . . 
Were not these friendships, after all, the best work of a man’s 
life? Did he place a higher value even on his book itself, 
which, it seemed, he might never finish now? 

And now there returned to him something that the dead 
old Colonel had told him long ago, and to-day he saw it for 
truth. However his father had wronged him, he would always 


QUEED 391 

have this, at least, to bless his memory for. For it was his 
father who had called him to live in this city where dwelt, 
as the strong voice that was now still had said, the kindest 
and sweetest people in the world. 

Henry G. Surface died at half-past two o’clock on the after- 
noon of March 24. At one o ’clock that night, while the Post's 
startling story was yet in process of the making, his son stood 
at the mantel in Surface’s sitting-room, and looked over the 
wreck that his hands had made. That his father’s treasures 
were hidden somewhere here he had hardly entertained a 
doubt. Yet he had pulled the place all to pieces without find- 
ing a trace of them. 

The once pretty sitting-room looked, indeed, as if a tor- 
nado had struck it. The fireplace was a litter of broken brick 
and mortar ; half the floor was ripped up and the boards flung 
back anyhow; table drawers and bookcases had been ran- 
sacked, and looked it; books rifled in vain were heaped in 
disorderly hummocks wherever there was room for them; 
everywhere a vandal hand had been, leaving behind a train 
of devastation and ruin. 

And it had all been fruitless. He had been working with- 
out pause since half-past six o’clock, and not the smallest 
clue had rewarded him. 

It was one of those interludes when early spring demon- 
strates that she could play August convincingly had she a 
mind to. The night was stifling. That the windows had to 
be shut tight, to deaden the noise of loosening brick and rip- 
ping board, made matters so much the worse. Surface was 
stripped to the waist, and it needed no second glance at him, 
as he stood now, to see that he was physically competent. 
There was no one-sided over-development here; Klinker’s 
exercises, it will be remembered, were for all parts of the 
body. Shoulders stalwart, but not too broad, rounded beau- 
tifully into the upper arm; the chest swelled like a full sail; 
many a woman in that town had a larger waist. Never he 
moved but muscle flowed and rippled under the shining skin; 


392 QUEED 

he raised his right hand to scratch his left ear, and the hard 
blue biceps leaped out like a live thing. In fact, it had been 
some months since the young man had first entertained the 
suspicion that he could administer that thrashing to Mr. Pat 
whenever he felt inclined. Only it happened that he and Mr. 
Pat had become pretty good friends now, and it was the 
proof-reader’s boast that he had never once made a bull in 
“Mr. Queed’s copy” since the day of the famous fleas. 

In the quiet night the young man stood resting from 
his labors, and taking depressed thought. He was covered 
with grime and streaked with sweat; a ragged red stripe on 
his cheek, where a board had bounced up and struck him, 
detracted nothing from the sombreness of his appearance. 
Somewhere, valuable papers waited to be found ; bank-books, 
certainly; very likely stock or bonds or certificates of deposit; 
please God, a will. Somewhere — but where? From his fa- 
ther’s significant remark during their last conversation, he 
would have staked his life that all these things were here, in 
easy reach. And yet — 

Standing precariously on the loose-piled bricks of the fire- 
place, he looked over the ravaged room. He felt profoundly 
discouraged. Success in this search meant more to him than 
he liked to think about, and now his chance of success had 
shrunk to the vanishing point. The bowels of the room lay 
open before his eye, and there was no hiding-place in them. 
He knew of nowhere else to look. The cold fear seized him 
that the money and the papers were hidden beyond his find- 
ing — that they lay tucked away in some safety-deposit 
vault in New York, where his eye would never hunt them 
out. 

Surface’s son leaned against the elaborate mantel, inimit- 
ably weary. He shifted his position ever so little ; and there- 
upon luck did for him what reason would never have done. 
The brick on which his right foot rested turned under his 
weight and he lost his foothold. To save himself, he caught 
the mantel-top with both hands, and the next moment 
pitched heavily backward to the floor. 


QUEED 393 

The mantel, in fact, had come off in his hands. It pitched 
to the floor with him, speeding his fall, thumping upon his 
chest like a vigorous adversary. But the violence of his de- 
scent only made him the more sharply aware that this 
strange mantel had left its moorings as though on greased 
rollers. 

His heart playing a sudden drum-beat, he threw the 
carven timber from him and bounded to his feet. The first 
flying glance showed him the strange truth : his blundering 
feet had marvelously stumbled into his father’s arcana. 
For he looked, not at an unsightly mass of splintered laths 
and torn wall-paper and shattered plaster, but into as neat 
a little cupboard as a man could wish. 

The cupboard was as wide as the mantel itself ; lined and 
ceiled with a dark red wood which beautifully threw back 
the glare of the dancing gas-jet. It was half-full of things, 
old books, letters, bundles of papers held together with rub- 
ber bands, canvas bags — all grouped and piled in the most 
orderly way about a large tin dispatch-box. This box drew 
the young man’s gaze like a sudden shout; he was hardly on 
his feet before he had sprung forward and jerked it out. 
Instantly the treacherous bricks threw him again; sprawled 
on the floor he seized one of them and smashed through the 
hasp at a blow. 

Bit by bit the illuminating truth came out. In all his own 
calculations, close and exact as he had thought them, he had 
lost sight of one simple but vital fact. In the years that he 
had been in prison, his father had spent no money beyond 
the twenty-five dollars a month to Tim Queed ; and com- 
paratively little in the years of his wanderings. In all this 
time the interest upon his “nest-egg” had been steadily 
accumulating. Five per cent railroad bonds, and certificates 
of deposit in four different banks, were the forms in which 
the money had been tucked away, by what devilish clever- 
ness could only be imagined. But the simple fact was that 
his father had died worth not less than two hundred thou- 
sand dollars and probably more. And this did not include 


394 QUEED 

the house, which, it appeared, his father had bought, and 
not leased as he said; nor did it include four thousand four 
hundred dollars in gold and banknotes which he found in 
the canvas sacks after his first flying calculation was 
made. • 

Early in the morning, when the newsboys were already 
crying the Post upon the streets, young Henry Surface came 
at last upon the will. It was very brief, but entirely clear and 
to the point. His father had left to him without conditions, 
everything of which he died possessed. The will was dated in 
June of the previous summer — he recalled a two days’ ab- 
sence of his father’s at that time — and was witnessed, in a 
villainous hand, by Timothy Queed. 

There were many formalities to be complied with, and 
some of them would take time. But within a week matters 
were on a solid enough footing to warrant a first step; and 
about this time Sharlee Weyland read, at her breakfast- table 
one morning, a long letter which surprised and disturbed her 
very much. 

The letter came from a well-known firm of attorneys. At 
great length it rehearsed the misfortunes that had befallen 
the Weyland estate, through the misappropriations of the 
late Henry G. Surface. But the gist of this letter, briefly put, 
was that the late Henry G. Surface had died possessed of a 
property estimated to be worth two hundred thousand dol- 
lars, either more or less ; that this property was believed to 
be merely the late trustee’s appropriations from the Wey- 
land estate, with accrued interest; that “our client Mr. 
Henry G. Surface, Jr., heir by will to his father’s ostensible 
property,” therefore purposed to pay over this sum to the 
Weyland estate, as soon as necessary formalities could be 
complied with; and that, further, our client, Mr. Henry G. 
Surface, Jr., assumed personal responsibility “ for the resi- 
due due to your late father’s estate, amounting to one hun- 
dred and seventeen thousand dollars, either more or less, 
with interest since 1881; and this debt, he instructs us to 


OUEED 395 

say, he will discharge from time to time, as his own resources 
will permit.” 

So wrote Messrs. Blair and Jamieson to Miss Charlotte 
Lee Weyland, congratulating her, “in conclusion, upon the 
strange circumstances which have brought you, after so long 
an interval, justice and restitution,” and begging to remain 
very respectfully hers. To which letter after four days’ in- 
terval, they received the following reply: 

Messrs. Blair & Jamieson, 

Commonwealth Building, 

City. 

Dear Sirs: — 

Our client, Miss C. L. Weyland, of this city, instructs us to advise you, 
in reply to your letter of the 4th inst., directed to her, that, while thank- 
ing you for the expression of intention therein contained anent the pro- 
perty left by the late Henry G. Surface, and very cordially appreciating 
the spirit actuating Mr. Henry G. Surface, Jr., in the matter, she never- 
theless feels herself without title or claim to said property, and therefore 
positively declines to accept it, in whole or in any part. 

Respectfully yours, 
Ampersand, Bolling and Byrd. 

A more argumentative and insistent letter from Messrs. 
Blair and Jamieson was answered with the same brief posi- 
tiveness by Messrs. Ampersand, Bolling and Byrd. There- 
after, no more communications were exchanged by the at- 
torneys. But a day or two after her second refusal, Sharlee 
Weyland received another letter about the matter of dispute, 
this time a more personal one. The envelope was directed 
in a small neat hand which she knew very well ; she had first 
seen it on sheets of yellow paper in Mrs. Paynter’s dining- 
room. The letter said : 

Dear Miss Weyland: — 

Your refusal to allow my father’s estate to restore to you, so far as it 
can, the money which it took from you, and thus to right, in part, a grave 
wrong, is to me a great surprise and disappointment. I had not thought 
it possible that you, upon due reflection, could take a position the one ob- 
vious effect of which is to keep a son permanently under the shadow of 
his father’s dishonor. 


396 QUEED 

Do not, of course, misunderstand me. I have known you too well to 
believe for a moment that you can be swayed by ungenerous motives. I 
am very sure that you are taking now the part which you believe most 
generous. But that view is, I assure you, so far from the real facts that I 
can only conclude that you have refused to learn what these facts are. 
Both legally and morally the money is yours. No one else on earth has 
a shadow of claim to it. I most earnestly beg that, in fairness to me, you 
will at least give my attorneys the chance to convince yours that what I 
write here is true and unanswerable. 

Should you adhere to your present position, the money will, of course, 
be trusteed for your benefit, nor will a penny of it be touched until it is 
accepted, if not by you, then by your heirs or assigns. But I cannot be- 
lieve that you will continue to find magnanimity in shirking your just 
responsibilities, and denying to me my right to wipe out this stain. 

Very truly yours, 

Henry G. Surface, Jr. 

No answer ever came to this letter, and there the matter 
rested through March and into the sultry April. 


XXXI 


God moves in a Mysterious Way: how the Finished Miss Avery 
appears as the Instrument of Providence; how Sharlee sees 
her Idol of Many Years go toppling in the Dust, and how it 
is her Turn to meditate in the Still Watches. 



HE print danced before his outraged eyes; his chest 


heaved at the revolting evidence of man’s duplicity; 


and Charles Gardiner West laid down his morning’s 
Post with a hand that shook. 

Meachy T. Bangor announces his candidacy for the nomina- 
tion for Mayor, subject to the Democratic primary. 

For West had not a moment’s uncertainty as to what this 
announcement meant. Meachy T. Bangor spoke, nay in- 
vented, the language of the tribe. He was elect of the elect; 
what the silent powers that were thought was his thought; 
their ways were his ways, their people his people. When 
Meachy T. Bangor announced that he was a candidate for the 
nomination for Mayor, it meant that the all-powerful ma- 
chine had already nominated him for Mayor, and whom 
the organization nominated it elected. Meachy T. Bangor! 
Plonny Neal’s young, progressive candidate of the reformer 
type! 

Bitterness flooded West’s soul when he thought of Plonny. 
Had the boss been grossly deceived or grossly deceiving? 
Could that honest and affectionate eye, whose look of frank 
admiration had been almost embarrassing, have covered 
base and deliberate treachery? Was it possible that he, West, 
who had always been confident that he could see as far into a 
millstone as another, had been a cheap trickster’s easy meat? 

Day by day, since the appearance of the reformatory ar- 
ticle, West had waited for some sign of appreciation and un- 
derstanding from those on the inside. None had come. Not 


398 QUEED 

a soul except himself, and Plonny, had appeared aware that 
he, by a masterly compromise, had averted disaster from the 
party, and clearly revealed himself as the young man of des- 
tiny. On the contrary, the House spokesmen, apparently ut- 
terly blind to any impending crisis, had, in the closing hours 
of the session, voted away some eighty thousand dollars of 
the hundred thousand rescued by West from the reforma- 
tory, in a multiplication of offices which it was difficult to 
regard as absolutely indispensable in a hard times year. 
This action, tallying so closely with what his former assist- 
ant had predicted, had bewildered and unsettled West; the 
continuing silence of the leaders — “the other leaders,” he 
had found himself saying — had led him into anxious spec- 
ulations; and now, in a staggering burst, the disgraceful 
truth was revealed to him. They had used him, tricked and 
used him like a smooth tool, and having used him, had de- 
liberately passed him, standing fine and patient in the line, 
to throw the mantle over the corrupt and unspeakable 
Bangor. 

By heavens, it was not to be endured. Was it for this that 
he had left Blaines College, where a career of honorable use- 
fulness lay before him; that he had sacrificed personal wishes 
and ambitions to the insistent statement that his City and 
State had need of him ; that he had stood ten months in the 
line without a murmur; and that at last, confronted with the 
necessity of choosing between the wishes of his personal in- 
timates and the larger good, he had courageously chosen the 
latter and suffered in silence the suspicion of having played 
false with the best friends he had in the world? Was it for 
this that he had lost his valuable assistant, whose place he 
could never hope to fill? — for this that he was referred to 
habitually by an evening contemporary as the Plonny Neal 
organ? 

He was thoroughly disgusted with newspaper work this 
morning, disgusted with the line, disgusted with hopeful ef- 
forts to uplift the people. What did his Post work really 
amount to? — unremitting toil, the ceaseless forcing up of 


QUEED 399 

immature and insincere opinions, no thanks or apprecia- 
tion anywhere, and at the end the designation of the Plonny 
Neal organ. What did the uplift amount to? Could progress 
really ever be forced a single inch? And why should he wear 
out his life in the selfless service of those who, it seemed, 
acknowledged no obligation to him? As for public life, if this 
was a sample, the less he saw of it the better. He would take 
anything in the world sooner than a career of hypocrisy, 
double-dealing and treachery, of dirty looting in the name of 
the public good, of degrading traffic with a crew of liars and 
confidence men. 

But through all the young man’s indignation and resent- 
ment there ran an unsteadying doubt, a miserable doubt of 
himself. Had his motives in the reformatory matter been 
as absolutely spotless as he had charmed himself into be- 
lieving? . . . What manner of man was he? Was he really 
wanting in permanent convictions about anything? . . .Was 
it possible, was' it thinkable or conceivable, that he was a 
complaisant invertebrate whom the last strong man that 
had his ear could play upon like a flute? 

West passed a most unhappy morning. But at lunch, at 
the club, it was his portion to have his buoyant good-humor 
completely restored to him. He fell in with ancient boon 
companions; they made much of him; involved him in gay 
talk; smoothed him down, patted him on the head, found 
his self-esteem for him, and handed it over in its pristine 
vigor. Before he had sat half an hour at the merry table, he 
could look back at his profound depression of the morning 
with smiling wonder. Where in the world had he gotten his 
terrible grouch? Not a thing in the world had happened, 
except that the mayoralty was not going to be handed to 
him on a large silver platter. Was that such a fearful loss 
after all? On the contrary, was it not rather a good rid- 
dance? Being Mayor, in all human probability, would be a 
horrible bore. 

It was a mild, azure, zephyrous day, spring at her bright- 
est and best. West, descending the club steps, sniffed the 


400 QUEED 

fragrant air affectionately, and was hanged if he would go 
near the office on such an afternoon. Let the Post readers 
plod along to-morrow with an editorial page both skimpy 
and inferior; anything he gave them would still be too 
good for them, middle-class drabs and dullards that they 
were. 

The big red automobile was old now, and needed paint, 
but it still ran staunch and true; and Miss Avery had a 
face, a form, and a sinuous graceful manner, had veils and 
hats and sinuous graceful coats, that would have glorified 
a far less worthy vehicle. And she drove divinely. By in- 
vitation she took the wheel that afternoon, and with sure, 
clever hands whipped the docile leviathan over the hills 
and far away. 

The world knows how fate uses her own instruments in 
her own way, frequently selecting far stranger ones than the 
delightful and wealthy Miss Avery. Now for more than a 
year this accomplished girl had been thinking that if Charles 
Gardiner West had anything to say to her, it was high time 
that he should say it. If she had not set herself to find out 
what was hobbling the tongue of the man she wanted, she 
would have been less than a woman; and Miss Avery was 
a good deal more. Hence, when she had seen West with 
Sharlee Weyland, and in particular on the last two or three 
times she had seen West with Sharlee Weyland, she had 
watched his manner toward that lady with profound mis- 
givings, of the sort which starts every true woman to fight- 
ing for her own. 

Now Miss Avery had a weapon, in the shape of valuable 
knowledge, or, at any rate, a valuable suspicion that had 
lately reached her: the suspicion, in short, which had some- 
how crept abroad as suspicions will, that West had done a 
certain thing which another man was supposed to have done. 
Therefore, when they turned homeward in the soft dusk, her 
man having been brought to exactly the right frame of mind, 
she struck with her most languorous voice. 

“How is that dear little Charlotte Weyland? It seems to 


QUEED 401 

me I have n’t seen her for a year, though it was positively 
only last week.” 

“Oh! She seemed very well when I saw her last.” 

So. Mr. West, of the lady he was going to marry. For, 
though he had never had just the right opportunity to com- 
plete the sweet message he had begun at the Byrds’ one 
night, his mind was still quite made up on that point. It 
was true that the, atmosphere of riches which fairly exuded 
from the girl now at his side had a very strong appeal 
for his lower instincts. But he was not a man to be ridden 
by his lower instincts. No; he had set his foot upon the 
fleshpots; his idealistic nature had overcome the world. 

Miss Avery, sublimely unaware that Mr. West was going 
to offer marriage to her rival during the present month, 
the marriage itself to take place in October, indolently con- 
tinued : — 

“To my mind she’s quite the most attractive dear little 
thing in town. I suppose she ’s quite recovered from her dis- 
appointment over the — hospital, or whatever it was?” 

“ Oh, I believe so. I never heard her mention it but once.” 

West’s pleasant face had clouded a little. Through her 
fluttering veil she noted that fact with distinct satisfaction. 

“I never met that interesting young Mr. Surface,” said 
she, sweeping the car around a curve in the white road and 
evading five women in a surrey with polished skill. “But — 
truly, I have found myself thinking of him and feeling sorry 
for him more than once.” 

“Sorry for him — What about?” 

“Oh, haven’t you heard, then? It’s rather mournful. 
You see, when Charlotte Weyland found out that he had 
written a certain editorial in the Post — you know more 
about this part of it than I — ” 

“But he did n’t write it,” said West, unhesitatingly. “I 
wrote it myself.” 

“You?” 

She looked at him with frank surprise in her eyes; not too 
much frank surprise; rather as one who feels much but en- 


402 QUEED 

deavors to suppress it for courtesy’s sake. “ Forgive me — I 
did n’t know. There has been a little horrid gossip — but of 
course nearly every one has thought that he — ” 

“I’m sure I’m not responsible for what people think,” 
said West, a little aggressively, but with a strangely sinking 
heart. “There has been not the slightest mystery or attempt 
at concealment — ” 

“Oh! Then of course Charlotte knows all about it now?” 

“I don’t know whether she does or not. When I tried to 
tell her the whole story,” explained West, “soon after the 
incident occurred, she was so agitated about it, the subject 
seemed so painful to her, that I was forced to give it up. You 
can understand my position. Ever since, I have been waiting 
for an opportunity to take her quietly and straighten out 
the whole matter for her in a calm and rational way. For 
her part she has evidently regarded the subject as happily 
closed. Why under heaven should I press it upon her — 
merely to gain the academic satisfaction of convincing her 
that the Post acted on information superior and judgment 
sounder than her own?” 

Miss Avery, now devoting herself to her chauffeur’s du- 
ties through a moment of silence, was no match for Mr. West 
at the game of ethical debate, and knew it. However, she 
held a very strong card in her pongee sleeve, and she knew 
that too. 

“ I see — of course. You know I think you have been quite 
right through it all. And yet — you won’t mind? — I can’t 
help feeling sorry for Mr. Surface.” 

“Very well — you most mysterious lady. Go on and tell 
me why you can’t help feeling sorry for Mr. Surface.” 

Miss Avery told him. How she knew anything about the 
private affairs of Mr. Surface and Miss Weyland, of which it 
is certain that neither of them had ever spoken, is a mys- 
tery, indeed : but Gossip is Argus and has a thousand ears to 
boot. Miss Avery was careful to depict Sharlee’s attitude 
toward the unfortunate Mr. Surface as just severe enough 
to suggest to West that he must act at once, and not so 


QUEED 403 

severe as to suggest to him — conceivably — the desir- 
ability, from a selfish point of view, of not acting at all. It 
was a task for a diplomat, which is to say a task for a Miss 
Avery. 

“ Rather fine of him, was n’t it, to assume all the blame? 
— particularly if it’s true, as people say,” concluded Miss 
Avery, “that the man’s in love with her and she cares no- 
thing for him.” 

“Fine — splendid — but entirely unnecessary,” said 
West. 

The little story had disturbed him greatly. He had had no 
knowledge of any developments between Sharlee and his 
former assistant ; and now he was unhappily conscious that 
he ought to have spoken weeks ago. 

“I’m awfully sorry to hear this,” he resumed, “for I am 
much attached to that boy. Still — if, as you say, every- 
thing is all right now — ” 

“Oh, but I don’t know at all that it is,” said Miss Avery, 
hastily. “That is just the point. The last I heard of it, she 
had forbidden him her house.” 

“That won’t do,” said Charles Gardiner West, in a burst 
of generosity. “I’ll clear up that difficulty before I sleep 
to-night.” 

And he was as good as his word^ or, let us say, almost as 
good. The next night but one he called upon Sharlee Wey- 
land with two unalterable purposes in his mind. One was to 
tell her the full inside history of the reformatory article from 
the beginning. The other was to notify her in due form that 
she held his heart in permanent captivity. 

To Miss Avery, it made not the slightest difference whether 
the gifted and charming editor of the Post sold out his prin- 
ciples for a price every morning in the month. At his pleas- 
ure he might fracture all of the decalogue that was refinedly 
fracturable, and so long as he rescued his social position 
intact from the ruin, he was her man just the same. But 
she had an instinct, surer than reasoned wisdom, that Shar- 
lee Weyland viewed these matters differently. Therefore 


404 QUEED 

she had sent West to make his little confession, face to face. 
And therefore West, after an hour of delightful tete-cL-tUe 
in the charming little back parlor, stiffened himself up, his 
brow sicklying o’er with the pale cast of disagreeable 
thought, and began to make it. 

“I’ve got to tell you something about — a subject that 
won’t be welcome to you,” he plunged in, rather lugubri- 
ously. “I mean — the reformatory.” 

Sharlee’s face, which had been merry and sweet, instantly 
changed and quieted at that word ; interest sprang full- 
armed in her deep blue eyes. 

“Have you? Tell me anything about it you wish.” 

“You remember that — last editorial in the Post?' 1 

“Do you think that I forget so easily?” 

West hardly liked that reply. Nor had he ever supposed 
that he would find the subject so difficult. 

“Well! I was surprised and — hurt to learn — recently — 
that you had — well, had been rather severe with Surface, 
under the impression that — the full responsibility for that 
article was his.” 

Sharlee sat in the same flowered arm-chair she had once 
occupied to put this same Surface, then known as little Dr. 
Queed, in his place. Her heart warmed to West for his gen- 
erous impulse to intercede. Still, she hardly conceived that 
her treatment of Mr. Surface was any concern of Mr. West’s. 

“And so?” 

“I must tell you,” he said, oddly uneasy under her 
straightforward look, “that — that you have made a mis- 
take. The responsibility is mine.” 

“Ah, you mean that you, as the editor, are willing to take 
it.” 

“No,” said West — “no ”; and then suddenly he felt like 
a rash suicide, repentant at the last moment. Already the 
waters were rushing over his head ; he felt a wild impulse to 
clutch at the life-belt she had flung out to him. It is to be 
remembered to his credit that he conquered it. “No, — I 
— I wrote the article myself.” 


QUEED 


405 


“You?” 

Her monosyllable had been Miss Avery’s, but there re- 
semblance parted. Sharlee sat still in her chair, and pre- 
sently her lashes fluttered and fell. To West’s surprise, a 
beautiful color swept upward from her throat to drown in her 
rough dark hair. “Oh,” said she, under her breath, “I’m 
glad — so glad l 1 ' 

West heaved a great sigh of relief. It was all over, and she 
was glad. Had n’t he known all along that a woman will 
always forgive everything in the man she loves? She was 
glad because he had told her when another man might have 
kept silent. And yet her look perplexed him; her words per- 
plexed him. Undoubtedly she must have something more to 
say than a mere expression of vague general gladness over 
the situation. 

“Need I say that I never intended there should be any 
doubt about the matter? I meant to explain it all to you long 
ago, only there never seemed to be any suitable opportun- 
ity.” 

Sharlee’s color died away. In silence she raised her eyes 
and looked at him. 

“ I started to tell you all about it once, at the time, but 
you know,” he said, with a little nervous laugh, “you seemed 
to find the subject so extremely painful then — that I 
thought I had better wait till you could look at it more 
calmly.” 

Still she said nothing, but only sat still in her chair and 
looked at him. 

“I shall always regret,” continued West, laboriously, 
“ that my — silence, which I assure you I meant in kindness, 
should have — Why do you look at me that way, Miss 
Weyland?” he said, with a quick change of voice. “I don’t 
understand you.” 

Sharlee gave a small start and said: “Was I looking at 
you in any particular way?” 

“ You looked as mournful,” said West, with that same little 
laugh, “as though you had lost your last friend. Now — ” 


406 QUEED 

“ No, not my last one,” said Sharlee. 

“Well, don’t look so sad about it,” he said, in a voice of 
affectionate raillery. “Iam quite unhappy enough over it 
without — ” 

“I’m afraid I can’t help you to feel happier — not to- 
night. If I look sad, you see, it is because I feel that way.” 

“Sad?” he echoed, bewildered. “Why should you be sad 
now — when it is all going to be straightened out — 
when — ” 

“Well, don’t you think it’s pretty sad — the part that 
can’t ever be straightened out?” 

Unexpectedly she got up, and walked slowly away, a dis- 
concerting trick she had ; wandered about the room, looking 
about her something like a stranger in a picture gallery; 
touching a bowl of flowers here, there setting a book to 
rights; and West, rising too, following her sombrely with his 
eyes, had never wanted her so much in all his life. 

Presently she returned to him; asked him to sit down 
again; and, still standing herself, began speaking in a quiet 
kind voice which, nevertheless, rang ominously in his ears 
from her first word. 

“I remember,” said Sharlee, “when I was a very little 
girl, not more than twelve years old, I think, I first heard 
about you — about Charles Gardiner West. You were 
hardly grown then, but already people were talking about 
you. I don’t remember now, of course, just what they said, 
but it must have been something very splendid, for I 
remember the sort of picture I got. I have always liked for 
men to be very clean and high-minded — I think because my 
father was that sort of man. I have put that above intel- 
lect, and abilities, and what would be called attractions; and 
so what they said about you made a great impression on me. 
You know how very young girls are — how they like to have 
the figure of a prince to spin their little romances around . . . 
and so I took you for mine. You were my knight without fear 
and without reproach ... Sir Galahad. When I was six- 
teen, I used to pass you in the street and wonder if you 


QUEED 407 

did n’t hear my heart thumping. You never looked at me; 
you had n’t any idea who I was. And that is a big and fine 
thing, I think — to be the hero of somebody you don’t even 
know by name . . . though of course not so big and fine as 
to be the hero of somebody who knows you very well. And 
you were that to me, too. When I grew up and came to 
know you, I still kept you on that pedestal you never saw. 
I measured you by the picture I had carried for so many 
years, and I was not disappointed. All that my little girl’s 
fancy had painted you, you seemed to be. I look back now 
over the last few years of my life, and so much that I have 
liked most — that has been dearest — has centred about 
you. Yes, more than once I have been quite sure that I . . . 
was in love with you. You wonder that I can show you my 
heart this way? I couldn’t of course, except — well — that 
it is all past now. And that is what seems sad to me. . . . 
There never was any prince; my knight is dead; and Sir 
Galahad I got out of a book. . . . Don’t you think that that 
is pretty sad?” 

West, who had been looking at her with a kind of fright- 
ened fascination, hastily averted his eyes, for he saw that 
her own had suddenly filled with tears. She turned away 
from him again; a somewhat painful silence ensued ; and pre- 
sently she broke it, speaking in a peculiarly gentle voice, and 
not looking at him. 

“I’m glad that you told me — at last. I’ll be glad to 
remember that . . . and I’m always your friend. But don’t 
you think that perhaps we ’d better finish our talk some other 
time?” 

“No,” said West. “No.” 

He pulled himself together, struggling desperately to 
throw off the curious benumbing inertia that was settling 
down upon him. “You are doing me an injustice. A most 
tremendous injustice. You have misunderstood everything 
from the beginning. I must explain — ” 

“ Don’t you think that argument will only make it all so 
much worse?” 


408 QUEED 

“ Nothing could possibly be worse for me than to have you 
think of me and speak to me in this way.” 

Obediently she sat down, her face still and sad ; and West, 
pausing a moment to marshal his thoughts into convincing 
form, launched forth upon his defense. 

From the first he felt that he did not make a success of it; 
was not doing himself justice. Recent events, in the legisla- 
ture and with reference to Meachy T. Bangor, had greatly 
weakened his confidence in his arguments. Even to himself 
he seemed to have been strangely “easy”; his exposition 
sounded labored and hollow in his own ears. But worse 
than this was the bottomless despondency into which the 
girl’s brief autobiography had strangely cast him. A vast 
mysterious depression had closed over him, which entirely 
robbed him of his usual adroit felicity of speech. He brought 
his explanation up to the publication of the unhappy article, 
and there abruptly broke off. 

A long silence followed his ending, and at last Sharlee 
said : — 

“I suppose a sudden change of heart in the middle of a 
fight is always an unhappy thing. It always means a good 
deal of pain for somebody. Still — sometimes they must 
come, and when they do, I suppose the only thing to do is to 
meet them honestly — though, personally, I think I should 
always trust my heart against my head. But . . . if you had 
only come to us that first morning and frankly explained 
just why you deserted us — if you had told us all this that 
you have just told me — ” 

“That is exactly what I wanted and intended to do,” in- 
terrupted West. “I kept silent out of regard for you.” 

“Out of regard for me?” 

“When I started to tell you all about it, that night at 
Mrs. Byrd’s, it seemed to me that you had brooded over the 
matter until you had gotten in an overwrought and — over- 
strung condition about it. It seemed to me the considerate 
thing not to force the unwelcome topic upon you, but rather 
to wait — ” 


QUEED 409 

“But had you the right to consider my imaginary feelings 
in such a matter between yourself and . . . ? And besides, 
you did not quite keep silent, you remember. You said 
something that led me to think that you had discharged Mr. 
Surface for writing that article.” 

“ I did not intend you to think anything of the kind. Any- 
thing in the least like that. If my words were ambiguous, it 
was because, seeing, as I say, that you were in an overstrung 
condition, I thought it best to let the whole matter rest until 
you could look at it calmly and rationally.” 

She made no reply. 

“But why dwell on that part of it?” said West, beseech- 
ingly. “It was simply a wretched misunderstanding all 
around. I ’m sorrier than I can tell you for my part in it. I 
have been greatly to blame — I can see that now. Can’t you 
let bygones be bygones? I have come to you voluntarily and 
told you — ” 

“ Yes, after six weeks. Why, I was the best friend he had, 
Mr. West, and — Oh, me! How can I bear to remember 
what I said to him!” 

She turned her face hurriedly away from him. West, 
much moved, struggled on. 

“ But don’t you see — I did n’t know it! I never dreamed 
of such a thing. The moment I heard how matters stood — ” 

“Did it never occur to you in all this time that it might be 
assumed that Mr. Surface, having written all the reforma- 
tory articles, had written this one?” 

“ I did not think of that. I was short-sighted, I own. And 
of course,” he added more eagerly, “I supposed that he had 
told you himself.” 

“You don’t know him,” said Sharlee. 

A proud and beautiful look swept over her face. West 
rose, looking wretchedly unhappy, and stood, irresolute, 
facing her. 

“Can’t you — forgive me?” he asked presently, in a 
painful voice. 

Sharlee hesitated. 


410 QUEED 

“Don’t you know I said that it would only make things 
worse to talk about it to-night?” she said gently. “Every- 
thing you say seems to put us further and further apart. 
Why, there is nothing for me to forgive, Mr. West. There 
was a situation, and it imposed a certain conduct on you ; 
that is the whole story. I don’t come into it at all. It is all a 
matter between you and — your own — ” 

“You do forgive me then? But no — you talk to me just 
as though you had learned all this from somebody else — as 
though I had not come to you voluntarily and told you 
everything.” M 

Sharlee did not like to look at his face, which she had 
always seen before so confident and gay. 

“No,” said she sadly — “for I am still your friend.” 

“Friend!" 

He echoed the word wildly, contemptuously. He was just 
on the point of launching into a passionate speech, painting 
the bitterness of friendship to one who must have true love 
or nothing, and flinging his hand and his heart impetuously 
at her feet. But looking at her still face, he checked him- 
self, and just in time. Shaken by passion as he was, he was 
yet enough himself to understand that she would not listen 
to him. Why should he play the spendthrift and the wan- 
ton with his love? Why give her, for nothing, the sterile 
satisfaction of rejecting him, for her to prize, as he knew 
girls did, as merely one more notch upon her gun? 

Leaving his tempestuous exclamation hanging in mid-air, 
West stiffly shook Sharlee’s hand and walked blindly out of 
the room. 

He went home, and to bed, like one moving in a horrible 
dream. That night, and through all the next day, he felt 
utterly bereft and wretched : something, say, as though flood 
and pestilence had swept through his dear old town and car- 
ried off everything and everybody but himself. He crawled 
alone in a smashed world. On the second day following, he 
found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing about 
him with faint pluckings of convalescent interest, began to 


QUEED 41 1 

recognize some landmarks. On the third day, he was 
frankly wondering whether a girl with such overstrained, 
not to say hysterical ideals of conduct, would, after all, be a 
very comfortable person to spend one’s life with. 

On the evening of this day, about half-past eight o’clock, 
he emerged from his mother’s house, light overcoat over his 
arm in deference to his evening clothes, and started briskly 
down the street. On the second block, as luck had it, he 
overtook Tommy Semple walking the same way. 

“Gardiner,” said Semple, “when are you going to get over 
all this uplift rot and come back to Semple and West?” 

The question fell in so marvelously with West’s mood of 
acute discontent with all that his life had been for the past 
two years, that it looked to him strangely like Providence. 
The easy ways of commerce appeared vastly alluring to him ; 
his income, to say truth, had suffered sadly in the cause of the 
public; never had the snug dollars drawn him so strongly. 
He gave a slow, curious laugh. 

“Why, hang it, Tommy! I don’t know but I ’m ready to 
listen to your siren spiel — now!” 

In the darkness Semple’s eyes gleamed. His receipts had 
never been so good since West left him. 

“That ’s the talk! I need you in my business, old boy. By 
the bye, you can come in at bully advantage if you can 
move right away. I’m going to come talk with you to- 
morrow.” 

“Right’s the word,” said West. 

At the end of that block a large house stood in a lawn, half 
hidden from the street by a curtain of trees. From its con- 
cealed veranda came a ripple of faint, slow laughter, adver- 
tising the presence of charming society. West halted. 

“Here’s a nice house, Tommy; I think I’ll look in. See 
you to-morrow.” 

Semple, walking on, glanced back to see what house it 
was. It proved to be the brownstone palace leased for 
three years by old Mr. Avery, formerly of Mauch Chunk but 
now of Ours. 


412 QUEED 

Sharlee, too, retired from her painful interview with West 
with a sense of irreparable loss. Her idol of so many years 
had, at a word, toppled off into the dust, and not all the king’s 
horses could ever get him back again. It was like a death to 
her, and in most ways worse than a death. 

She lay awake a long time that night, thinking of the two 
men who, for she could not say how long, had equally shared 
first place in her thoughts. And gradually she read them 
both anew by the blaze lit by one small incident. 

She could not believe that West was deliberately false ; she 
was certain that he was not deliberately false. But she saw 
now, as by a sudden searchlight flung upon him, that her 
one-time paladin had a fatal weakness. He could not be 
honest with himself. He could believe anything that he 
wanted to believe. He could hypnotize himself at will by 
the enchanting music of his own imaginings. He had pretty 
graces and he told himself they were large, fine abilities ; dim 
emotions and he thought they were ideals; vague gropings 
of ambition, and when he had waved the hands of his fancy 
over them, presto, they had become great dominating pur- 
poses. He had fluttered fitfully from business to Blaines 
College; from the college to the Post; before long he would 
flutter on from the Post to something else — always falling 
short, always secretly disappointed, everywhere a failure 
as a man, though few might know it but himself. West’s 
trouble, in fact, was that he was not a man at all. He was 
weakest where a real man is strongest. He was merely a 
chameleon taking his color from whatever he happened to 
light upon ; a handsome boat which could never get any- 
where because it had no rudder; an ornamental butterfly 
driving aimlessly before the nearest breeze. He meant well, 
in a general way, but his good intentions proved descending 
paving-stones because he was constitutionally incapable of 
meaning anything very hard. 

West had had everything in the beginning except money; 
and he had the faculty of making all of that he wanted. 
Queed — she found that name still clinging to him in her 


QUEED 413 

thoughts — had had nothing in the beginning except his 
fearless honesty. In everything else that a man should be, 
he had seemed to her painfully destitute. But because 
through everything he had held unflinchingly to his honesty, 
he had been steadily climbing the heights. He had passed 
West long ago, because their faces were set in opposite di- 
rections. West had had the finest distinctions of honor care- 
fully instilled into him from his birth. Queed had deduced 
his, raw, from his own unswerving honesty. And the first 
acid test of a real situation showed that West’s honor was 
only burnished and decorated dross, while Queed’s, which 
he had made himself, was as fine gold. In that test, all super- 
ficial trappings were burned and shriveled away; men were 
made to show their men’s colors; and the “queer little man 
with the queer little name” had instantly cast off his re- 
splendent superior because contact with his superior’s dis- 
honesty was degrading to him. Yet in the same breath, he 
had allowed his former chief to foist off that dishonesty upon 
his own clean shoulders, and borne the detestable burden 
without demand for sympathy or claim for gratitude. And 
this was the measure of how, as Queed had climbed by his 
honesty, his whole nature had been strengthened and refined. 
For if he had begun as the most unconscious and merciless 
of egoists, who could sacrifice little Fifi to his comfort with- 
out a tremor, he had ended with the supreme act of purest 
altruism: the voluntary sacrifice of himself to save a man 
whom in his heart he must despise. 

But was that the supreme altruism? What had it cost 
him, after all, but her friendship? Perhaps he did not regard 
that as so heavy a price to pay. 

Sharlee turned her face to the wall. In the darkness, she 
felt the color rising at her throat and sweeping softly but 
resistlessly upward. And she found herself feverishly cling- 
ing to all that her little Doctor had said, and looked, in all 
their meetings which, remembered now, gave her the right 
to think that their parting had been hard for him, too. 

Yet it was not upon their parting that her mind busied 


414 QUEED 

itself most, but upon thoughts of their remeeting. The rela- 
tions which she had thought to exist between them had, it 
was clear, been violently reversed. The one point now was 
for her to meet the topsy-turveyed situation as swiftly, as 
generously, and as humbly as was possible. 

If she had been a man, she would have gone to him at 
once, hunted him up this very night, and told him in the 
most groveling language at her command, how infinitely 
sorry and ashamed she was. Lying wide-eyed in her little 
white bed, she composed a number of long speeches that 
she, as a man, would have made to him; embarrassing 
speeches which he, as a man, or any other man that ever 
lived, would never have endured fora moment. But she was 
not a man, she was a girl ; and girls were not allowed to go to 
men, and say frankly and honestly what was in their 
hearts. She was not in the least likely to meet him by acci- 
dent; the telephone was unthinkable. There remained only 
to write him a letter. 

Yes, but what to say in the letter? There was the critical 
and crucial question. No matter how artful and cajol- 
ing an apology she wrote, she knew exactly how he would 
treat it. He would write a civil, formal reply, assuring her 
that her apology was accepted, and there the matter would 
stand forever. For she had put herself terribly in the wrong; 
she had betrayed a damning weakness; it was extremely pro- 
bable that he would never care to resume friendship with 
one who had proved herself so hatefully mistrustful. Then, 
too, he was evidently very angry with her about the money. 
Only by meeting for a long, frank talk could she ever hope 
to make things right again; but not to save her life could 
she think of any form of letter which would bring such a 
meeting to pass. 

Pondering the question, she fell asleep. All next day, when- 
ever she had a minute and sometimes when she did not, she 
pondered it, and the next, and the next. Her heart smote 
her for the tardiness of her reparation ; but stronger than this 
was her fear of striking and missing fire. And at last an idea 


QUEED 415 

came to her; an idea so big and beautiful that it first startled 
and dazzled her, and then set her heart to singing; the per- 
fect idea which would blot away the whole miserable mess at 
one stroke. She sat down and wrote Mr. Surface five lines, 
asking him to be kind enough to call upon her in regard to 
the business matter about which he had written her a few 
weeks before. 

. She wrote this note from her house, one night; she ex- 
pected, of course, that he would come there to see her; she 
had planned out exactly where they were each to sit, and even 
large blocks of their conversation. But the very next morn- 
ing, before 10 o’clock, there came a knock upon the Depart- 
mental door and he walked into her office, looking more mat- 
ter-of-fact and business-like than she had ever seen him. 


XXXII 


Second Meeting between a Citizen and the Great Pleasure-Dog 
Behemoth , involving Plans for Two New Homes. 

ND this time they did not have to go into the hall to 



talk. 


No sooner had the opening door revealed the face 


of young Mr. Surface than Mr. Dayne, the kind-faced Secre- 
tary, reached hastily for his hat. In the same breath with 
his “ Come in ” and “ Good-morning,” he was heard to men- 
tion to the Assistant Secretary something about a little urgent 
business downtown. 

Mr. Dayne acted so promptly that he met the visitor on 
the very threshold of the office. The clergyman held out his 
hand with a light in his manly gray eye. 

“I'm sincerely glad to see you, Mr. Queed, to have the 
chance — ” 

“Surface, please.” 

Mr. Dayne gave his hand an extra wring. “Mr. Surface, 
you did a splendid thing. I ’m glad of this chance to tell you 
so, and to beg your forgiveness for having done you a grave 
injustice in my thoughts.” 

The young man stared at him. “ I have nothing to forgive 
you for, Mr. Dayne. In fact, I have no idea what you are 
talking about.” 

But Mr. Dayne did not enlighten him; in fact he was 
already walking briskly down the hall. Clearly the man had 
business that would not brook an instant’s delay. 

Hat in hand, the young man turned, plainly puzzled, and 
found himself looking at a white-faced little girl who gave 
back his look with brave steadiness. 

“ Do you think you can forgive me, too? ” she asked in a 
very small voice. 


<>UEED 417 

He came three steps forward, into the middle of the room, 
and there halted dead, staring at her with a look of searching 
inquiry. 

“I don’t understand this,” he said, in his controlled voice. 
“What are you talking about?” 

“Mr. West,” said Sharlee, “has told me all about it. 
About the reformatory. And I ’m sorry.” 

There she stuck. Of all the speeches of prostrate yet some- 
how noble self-flagellation which in the night seasons she had 
so beautifully polished, not one single word could she now 
recall. Yet she continued to meet his gaze, for so should 
apologies be given though the skies fall ; and she watched as 
one fascinated the blood slowly ebb from his close-set 
face. 

“Under the circumstances,” he said abruptly, “it was 
hardly a — a judicious thing to do. However, let us say no 
more about it.” 

He turned away from her, obviously unsteadied for all his 
even voice. And as he turned, his gaze, which had shifted 
only to get away from hers, was suddenly arrested and be- 
came fixed. 

In the corner of the room, beside the bookcase holding the 
works of Conant, Willoughby, and Smathers, lay the great 
pleasure-dog Behemoth, leonine head sunk upon two mas- 
sive outstretched paws. But Behemoth was not asleep; on 
the contrary he was overlooking the proceedings in the office 
with an air of intelligent and paternal interest. 

Between Behemoth and young Henry Surface there 
passed a long look. The young man walked slowly across 
the room to where the creature lay, and, bending down, 
patted him on the head. He did it with indescribable awk- 
wardness. Certainly Behemoth must have perceived what 
was so plain even to a human critic, that here was the first 
dog this man had ever patted in his life. Yet, being a pleas- 
ure-dog, he was wholly civil about it. In fact, after a lidless 
scrutiny unembarrassed by any recollections of his last meet- 
ing with this young man, he declared for friendship. 


4i 8 QUEED 

Gravely he lifted a behemothian paw, and gravely the young 
man shook it. 

To Behemoth young Mr. Surface addressed the following 
remarks : — 

“West was simply deceived — hoodwinked by men in 
finitely cleverer than he at that sort of thing. It was a 
manly thing — his coming to you now and telling you ; 
much harder than never to — have made the mistake in the 
beginning. Of course — it wipes the slate clean. It makes 
everything all right now. You appreciate that.” 

Behemoth yawned. 

The young man turned, and came a step or two forward, 
both face and voice under complete control again. 

“I received a note from you this morning,” he began 
briskly, “asking me to come in — ” 

The girl’s voice interrupted him. Standing beside the 
little typewriter-table, exactly where her caller had sur- 
prised her, she had watched with a mortifying dumbness the 
second meeting between the pleasure-dog and the little 
Doctor that was. But now pride sprang to her aid, stinging 
her into speech. For it was an unendurable thing that she 
should thus tamely surrender to him the mastery of her 
situation, and suffer her own fault to be glossed over so 
ingloriously. 

“Won’t you let me tell you,” she began hurriedly, “how 
sorry I am — how ashamed — that I misjudged — ” 

“No! No! I beg you to stop. There is not the smallest 
occasion for anything of that sort — ” 

“ Don’t you see my dreadful position? I suspect you, mis- 
judge you — wrong you at every step — and all the time 
you are doing a thing so fine — so generous and splendid — 
that I am humiliated — to — ” 

Once again she saw that painful transformation in his 
face: a difficult dull-red flood sweeping over it, only to recede 
instantly, leaving him white from neck to brow. 

“What is the use of talking in this way?” he asked per- 
emptorily. “What is the good of it, I say? The matter is 


QUEED 419 

over and done with. Everything is all right — his telling you 
wipes it all from the slate, just as I said. Don’t you see that? 
Well, can’t you dismiss the whole incident from your mind 
and forget that it ever happened?” 

“ I will try — if that is what you wish.” 

She turned away, utterly disappointed and disconcerted 
by his summary disposal of the burning topic over which she 
had planned such a long and satisfying discussion. He 
started to say something, checked himself, and said some- 
thing entirely different. 

“ I have received your note,” he began directly, “ asking me 
to come in and see you about the matter of difference be- 
tween the estates. That is why I have called. I trust that 
this means that you are going to be sensible and take your 
money.” 

“ In a way — yes. I will tell you — what I have thought.” 

“Well, sit down to tell me, please. You look tired ; not well 
at all. Not in the least. Take this comfortable chair.” 

Obediently she sat down in Mr. Dayne’s high-backed 
swivel-chair, which, when she leaned back, let her neat-shod 
little feet swing clear of the floor. The chair was a happy 
thought; it steadied her; so did his unexampled solicitous- 
ness, which showed, she thought, that her emotion had not 
escaped him. 

“ I have decided that I would take it,” said she, “with a — 
a — sort of condition.” # 

Sitting in the chair placed for Mr. Dayne’s callers, the 
young man showed instant signs of disapprobation. 

“No, no! You are big enough to accept your own without 
conditions.” 

“Oh — you won’t argue with me about that, will you? 
Perhaps it is unreasonable, but I could never be satisfied to 
take it — and spend it for myself. I could never have any 
pleasure in it — never feel that it was really mine. So,” she 
hurried on, “ I thought that it would be nice to take it — and 
give it away.” 

“Give it away!” he echoed, astonished and displeased. 


420 QUEED 

“Yes — give it to the State. I thought I should like to 
give it to — establish a reformatory.” 

Their eyes met. Upon his candid face she could watch the 
subtler meanings of her idea slowly sinking into and taking 
hold of his consciousness. 

“No — no!” came from him, explosively. “No! You must 
not think of such a thing.” 

“Yes — I have quite made up my mind. When the idea 
came to me it was like an inspiration. It seemed to me the 
perfect use to make of this money. Don’t you see? . . . 
And—” 

“No, I don’t see,” he said sharply. “Why will you per- 
sist in thinking that there is something peculiar and unclean 
about this money? — some imagined taint upon your title to 
it? Don’t you understand that it is yours in precisely the 
same definite and honest way that the money this office pays 
you — ” 

“Oh — surely it is all a question of feeling. And if I 
feel—” 

“It is a question of fact,” said Mr. Surface. “Listen to 
me. Suppose your father had put this money away for you 
somewhere, so that you knew nothing about it, hidden it, 
say, in a secret drawer somewhere about your house” — 
did n’t he know exactly the sort of places which fathers used 
to hide away money ? — “and that now, after all these years, 
you had suddenly found it, together with a note from him 
saying that it was for you. You follow me perfectly? Well? 
Would it ever occur to you to give that money to the State 

— for a reformatory ? ” 

“Oh — perhaps not. How can I tell? But that case 
would — ” 

“Would be exactly like this one,” he finished for her 
crisply. “The sole difference is that it happens to be my 
father who hid the money away instead of yours.” 

There was a silence. 

“Iam sorry,” said she, constrainedly, “ that you take this 

— this view. I had hoped so much that you might agree 


QUEED 421 

with me. Nevertheless, I think my mind is quite made 
up. I—” 

“Then why on earth have you gone through the formality 
of consulting me, only to tell me — ” 

“ Oh — because I thought it would be so nice if you would 
agree with me!’' 

“But I do not agree with you,” he said, looking at her 
with frowning steadiness. “I do not. Nobody on earth 
would agree with you. Have you talked with your friends 
about this mad proposal? Have you — ” 

“None of them but you. I did not care to.” 

The little speech affected him beyond all expectation; in 
full flight as he was, it stopped him dead. He lost first the 
thread of his argument; then his steadiness of eye and 
manner; and when he spoke, it was to follow up, not his own 
thought, but her implication, with those evidences of embar- 
rassment which he could never hide. 

“So we are friends again,” he stated, in rather a strained 
voice. 

“If you are willing — to take me back.” 

He sat silent, drumming a tattoo on his chair-arm with 
long, strong fingers; and when he resumed his argument, 
it was with an entire absence of his usual air of authority. 

“On every score, you ought to keep your money — to 
make yourself comfortable — to stop working — to bring 
yourself more pleasures, trips, whatever you want — all 
exactly as your father intended.” 

“Oh! — don’t argue with me, please! I asked you not. I 
must either take it for that or not at all.” 

“It — it is not my part,” he said reluctantly, “to dic- 
tate what you shall do with your own. I cannot sympathize 
in the least with your — your mad proposal. Not in the 
least. However, I must assume that you know your own 
mind. If it is quite made up — ” 

“Oh, it is! I have thought it all over so carefully — and 
with so much pleasure.” 

He rose decisively. “Very well, I will go to my lawyers 


422 QUEED 

at once — this morning. They will arrange it as you 
wish.” 

“Oh — will you? How can I thank you? And oh,” she 
added hastily, “there was — another point that I — I 
wished to speak to you about.” 

He gazed down at her, looking so small and sorrowful-eyed 
in her great chair, and all at once his knees ran to water, and 
the terrible fear clutched at him that his manhood would not 
last him out of the room. This was the reason, perhaps, 
that his voice was the little Doctor’s at its brusquest as he 
said : — 

“Well? What is it?” 

“The question,” she said nervously, “of a — a name for 
this reformatory that I want to found. I have thought a 
great deal about that. It is a — large part of my idea. 
And I have decided that my reformatory shall be called — 
that is, that I should like to call it — the Henry G. Surface 
Home.” 

He stared at her through a flash like a man stupefied ; and 
then, wheeling abruptly, walked away from her to the win- 
dows which overlooked the park. For some time he stood 
there, back determinedly toward her, staring with great 
fixity at nothing. But when he returned to her, she had 
never seen his face so stern. 

“You must be mad to suggest such a thing. Mad! Of 
course I shall not allow you to do it. I shall not give you 
the money for any such purpose.” 

“But if it is mine, as you wrote?” said Sharlee, looking up 
at him from the back of her big chair. 

Her point manifestly was unanswerable. With charac- 
teristic swiftness, he abandoned it, and fell back to far 
stronger ground. 

“ Yes, the money is yours,” he said stormily. “ But that is 
all. My father’s name is mine.” 

That silenced her, for the moment at least, and he swept 
rapidly on, 

“I do not in the least approve of your giving your money 


QUEED 423 

to establish a foundation at all. That, however, is a matter 
with which, unfortunately, I have nothing to do. But with 
my father’s name I have everything to do. I shall not per- 
mit you to — ” 

“ Surely — oh, surely, you will not refuse me so small a 
thing which would give me so much happiness.” 

“ Happiness? ” He flung the word back at her impatiently, 
but his intention of demolishing it was suddenly checked by 
a flashing remembrance of Fifi’s definition of it. “Will 
you kindly explain how you would get happiness from 
that?” 

“Oh — if you don’t see, I am afraid I — could never 
explain — ” 

“ It is a display of just the same sort of unthinking Quix- 
otism which has led you hitherto to refuse to accept your 
own money. What you propose is utterly irrational in every 
way. Can you deny it? Can you defend your proposal by 
any reasonable argument? I cannot imagine how so — so 
mad an idea ever came into your mind.” 

She sat still, her fingers playing with the frayed edges of 
Mr. Dayne’s blotting-pad, and allowed the silence to enfold 
them once more. 

“Your foundation,” he went on, with still further loss of 
motive power, “would — gain nothing by bearing the name 
of my father. He was not worthy. ... No one knows that 
better than you. Will you tell me what impulse put it into 
your mind to — to do this?” 

“I — had many reasons,” said she, speaking with some 
difficulty. “ I will tell you one. My father loved him once. I 
know he would like me to do something — to make the 
name honorable again.” 

“That,” he said, in a hard voice, “is beyond your power.” 

She showed no disposition to contradict him, or even to 
maintain the conversation. Presently he went on: — 

“I cannot let you injure your foundation by — branding 
it with his notoriety, in an impulsive and — and fruitless 
generosity. For it would be fruitless. You, of all people. 


424 QUEED 

must understand that the burden on the other side is — • 
impossibly heavy. You know that, don’t you?” 

She raised her head and looked at him. 

Again, her pride had been plucking at her heartstrings, 
burning her with the remembrance that he, when he gave 
her everything that a man could give, had done it in a man- 
ner perfect and without flaw. And now she, with her in- 
finitely smaller offering, sat tongue-tied and ineffectual, 
unable to give with a show of the purple, too poor-spirited 
even to yield him the truth for his truth which alone made 
the gift worth the offering. 

Her blood, her spirit, and all her inheritance rallied at the 
call of her pride. She looked at him, and made her gaze be 
steady: though this seemed to her the hardest thing she 
had ever done in her life. 

“ I must not let you think that I — wanted to do this only 
for your father’s sake. That would not be honest. Part of 
my pleasure in planning it — most of it, perhaps — was be- 
cause I — I should so much like to do something for your 
father’s son.” 

She rose, trying to give the movement a casual air, and 
went over to her little desk, pretending to busy herself 
straightening out the litter of papers upon it. From this 
safe distance, her back toward him, she forced herself to 
add: — 

“This reformatory will take the place of the one you — 
would have won for us. Don’t you see? Half — my hap- 
piness in giving it is gone, unless you will lend me the name.” 

Behind her the silence was impenetrable. 

She stood at her desk, methodically sorting papers which 
she did not see, and wildly guessing at the meaning of that 
look of turbulent consciousness which she had seen break 
startled into his eyes. More even than in their last meeting, 
she had found that the sight of his face, wonderfully changed 
yet even more wonderfully the same, deeply affected her 
to-day. Its new sadness and premature age moved her 
strangely; with a peculiar stab of compassion and pain she 


QUEED 425 

had perceived for the first time the gray in the nondescript 
hair about his temples. For his face, she had seen that the 
smooth sheath of satisfied self-absorption, which had once 
overlain it like the hard veneer on a table-top, had been 
scorched away as in a baptism by fire; from which all 
that was best in it had come out at once strengthened and 
chastened. And she thought that the shining quality of 
honesty in his face must be such as to strike strangers on the 
street. 

And now, behind her on the office floor, she heard his 
footsteps, and in one breath was suddenly cold with the fear 
that her hour had come, and hot with the fear that it had 
not. 

Engrossed with her papers, she moved so as to keep her 
back toward him; but he, with a directness which would 
not flinch even in this untried emergency, deliberately in- 
truded himself between her and the table ; and so once more 
they stood face to face. 

“I don’t understand you,” he began, his manner at its 
quietest. “Why do you want to do this for me?” 

At this close range, she glanced once at him and instantly 
looked away. His face was as white as paper ; and when she 
saw that her heart first stopped beating, and then pounded 
off in a wild frightened paean. 

“I — cannot tell you — I don’t know — exactly.” 

“What do you mean?” 

She hardly recognized his voice; instinctively she began 
backing away. 

“ I don’t think I — can explain. You — rather terrify me 
this morning.” 

“Are you in love with me?” he demanded in a terrible 
voice, beginning at the wrong end, as he would be sure to do. 

Finger at her lip, her blue eyes, bright with unshed tears, 
resting upon his in a gaze as direct as a child’s, Sharlee 
nodded her head up and down. 

And that was all the hint required by clever Mr. Surface, 
the famous social scientist. He advanced somehow, and 


426 QUEED 

took her in his arms. On the whole, it was rather surprising 
how satisfactorily he did it, considering that she was the 
first woman he had ever touched in all his days. 

So they stood through a time that might have been a 
minute and might have been an age, since all of them that 
mattered had soared away to the sunlit spaces where no 
time is. After awhile, driven by a strange fierce desire to see 
her face in the light of this new glory, he made a gentle 
effort to hold her off from him, but she clung to him, crying, 
“No, no! I don’t want you to see me yet.” 

After another interval of uncertain length, she said: — 

“All along my heart has cried out that you could n’t have 
done that, and hurt me so. You couldn't. I will never doubt 
my heart again. And you were so fine — so fine — to for- 
give me so easily.” 

In the midst of his dizzying exaltation, he marveled at the 
ease with which she spoke her inmost feeling; he, the great 
apostle of reason and self-mastery, was much slower in re- 
covering lost voice and control. It was some time before he 
would trust himself to speak, and even then the voice that 
he used was not recognizable as his. 

“So you are willing to do as much for my father’s son as to 
— to — take his name for your own.” 

“No, this is something that I am doing for myself. Your 
father was not perfect, but he was the only father that ever 
had a son whose name I would take for mine.” 

A silence. 

“We can keep my father’s house,” he said, in time, “for — 
for — us to live in. You must give up the office. And I will 
find light remunerative work, which will leave at least part 
of my time free for my book.” 

She gave a little laugh that was half a sob. “Perhaps — 
you could persuade that wealthy old lady — to get out a 
second edition of her thesaurus /” 

“I wish I could, though!” 

“You talk just like my little Doctor,” she gasped — “my 
— own little Doctor. . . . I’ve got a little surprise for you 


OUEED 427 

— about remunerative work,” she went on, “only I can’t 
tell you now, because it’s a secret. Promise that you won’t 
make me tell you.” 

He promised. 

Suddenly, without knowing why, she began to cry, her 
cheek against his breast. “You’ve had a sad life, little 
Doctor — a sad life. But I am going to make it all up to 
you — if you will show me the way.” 

Presently she became aware that her telephone was ring- 
ing, and ringing as though it had been at it for some time. 

“Oh bother! They won’t let us have even a little minute 
together after all these years. I suppose you must let me 
go — ” 

She turned from the desk with the most beautiful smile 
he had ever seen upon a face. 

“ It’s for you!” 

“For me?” he echoed like a man in a dream. “That is 

— very strange.” 

Strange, indeed ! Outside, the dull world was wagging on 
as before, unaware that there had taken place in this en- 
chanted room the most momentous event in history. 

He took the receiver from her with a left hand which 
trembled, and with his untrained right somehow caught and 
imprisoned both of hers. “Stand right by me,” he begged 
hurriedly. 

Now he hoisted the receiver in the general direction of his 
ear, and said in what he doubtless thought was quite a busi- 
nesslike manner: “Well?” 

“ Mr. Queed? This is Mr. Hickok,” said the incisive voice 
over the wire. “Well, what in the mischief are you doing up 
there?” 

“I’m — I’m — transacting some important business — 
with the Department,” said Mr. Surface, and gave Sharlee’s 
hands a desperate squeeze. “But my — ” 

“Well, we’re transacting some important business down 
here. Never should have found you but for Mr. Dayne’s hap- 
pening along. Did you know that West had resigned? ” 


428 QUEED 

“No, has he? But I started — ” 

“Peace to his ashes. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. The di- 
rectors are meeting now to elect his successor. Only one 
name has been mentioned. There’s only one editor we’ll 
hear of for the paper. Won’t you come back to us, my 
boy?” 

The young man cleared his throat. “Come? I’d — 
think it a — a great honor — there ’s nothing I ’d rather 
have. You are all too — too kind to me — I can’t tell you 
— but—” 

“Oh, no buts! But us no buts now! I’ll go tell 
them—” 

“No — wait,” called the young man, hastily. “ If I come, 
I don’t come as Queed, you know. My name is Henry G. 
Surface. That may make a difference — ” 

“ Come as Beelzebub ! ” said the old man, testily. “We ’ve 
had enough of hiring a name for the Post . This time we’re 
after a man, and by the Lord, we’ve got one!” 

Henry Surface turned away from the telephone, strug- 
gling with less than his usual success to show an unmoved 
face. 

“You — know?” 

She nodded : in her blue-spar eyes, there was the look of a 
winged victory. “That was the little secret — don’t you 
think it was a nice one? It is your magnificent boast come 
true. . . . And you don’t even say ‘ I told you so’!” 

He looked past her out into the park. Over the budding 
trees, already bursting and spreading their fans of green, far 
off over the jagged stretch of roofs, his gaze sought the bat- 
tered gray Post building and the row of windows behind 
which he had so often sat and worked. A mist came before 
his eyes; the trees curveted and swam; and his visible world 
swung upside down and went out in a singing and spark- 
shot blackness. 

She came to his side again : in silence slipped her hand into 
his ; and following both his look and his thought, she felt her 
own eyes smart with a sudden bright dimness. 


QUEED 429 

“This is the best city in the world,’ ' said Henry Surface. 
44 The kindest people — the kindest people — ” 

44 Yes, little Doctor.” 

He turned abruptly and caught her to him again ; and now, 
hearing even above the hammering of his own blood the 
wild fluttering of her heart against his, his tongue unlocked 
and he began to speak his heart. It was not speech as he had 
always known speech. In all his wonderful array of termin- 
ology there were no words fitted to this undreamed need ; he 
had to discover them somehow, by main strength make them 
up for himself ; and they came out stammering, hard-wrung, 
bearing new upon their rough faces the mint-mark of his 
own heart. Perhaps she did not prize them any the less on 
that account. 

44 1 ’m glad that you love me that way — Henry. I must 
call you Henry now — must n’t I, Henry? ” 

44 Do you know,” she said, after a time, 44 1 am — almost 
weakening about giving our money for a Home. Somehow, 
I ’d so like for you to have it, so that — ” 

She felt a little shiver run through him. 

44 No, no! I could not bear to touch it. We shall be fai 
happier — ” 

“You could stop work, buy yourself comforts, pleasures, 
trips. It is a mad thing,” she teased, 44 to give away money. 
. . . Oh, little Doctor — I can’t breathe if you hold me — 
so tight.” 

4 4 About the name,” he said presently, 44 1 — dislike to op- 
pose you, but I cannot — I cannot — ” 

44 Well, I’ve decided to change it, Henry, in deference to 
your wishes.” 

44 1 am extremely glad. I myself know a name — ” 

44 Instead of calling it the Henry G. Surface Home — ” 

Suddenly she drew away from him, leaving behind 
both her hands for a keepsake, and raised to him a look 
so luminous and radiant that he felt himself awed before 
it, like one who with impious feet has blundered upon holy 
ground. 


430 QUEED 

“ I am going to call it the Henry G. Surface Junior Home. 
Do you know any name for a Home so pretty as that? ” 

“No, no, I — can’t let you — ” 

But she cried him down passionately, saying: “ Yes, that 
is our name now, and we are going to make it honorable.” 

From his place beside the sociological bookcase — per- 
haps faunal naturalists can tell us why — the great pleasure- 
dog Behemoth, whose presence they had both forgotten, 
raised his leonine head and gave a sharp, joyous bark. 


40’ 7 'j 

































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